


the abyss returns even the boldest gaze

by tragakes (lejf)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Eventual Happy Ending, I really mean it, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), SO much whump out the wazoo, bucky get very very low, like a lot, murder and violence and sex, oof owie my bones, steve also plummets to the depths below, the death of innocents, this is a lotta angst, truly horrifying stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-29 18:01:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19025095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/tragakes
Summary: Stevie’s gone. He remembers that every day, every hour, with every accursed indrawn breath.Post-Endgame: where Steve doesn’t come back, but vanishes entirely.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The tags are not a joke! I’ve left out some pretty serious ones to avoid spoiling. For the full unredacted list of warnings and spoilers, roll over this.  
>  !
> 
> Otherwise, y’know, take care. I wasn’t intending this to get so long because I’m really freakin’ busy, but apparently I also _lost my mind_. Feel free to step off the ride at any time.
> 
> Title’s a quote from Darkest Dungeon.

“He’s not coming back,” Bucky says, hoarse, after he can’t stand the way Banner and Sam are watching the platform expectantly anymore. 

Sam’s expression goes pale. “What? But he–“

“Yeah,” Bucky cuts off. “He told me.” Why are the words suddenly so hard to get out? Bucky shakes his head. He’s only been unsnapped for a while — long enough to have half a week with Steve, but somehow he feels dead again. Already Steve’s absence seems to take a physical toll on him. “He’s not coming back.” Steve wanted to go back and dance with Peggy. He wanted to go back and love her until they grew old together. “The shield’s in your apartment.”

Yeah, that’s all he needed to say, all he needed to do. That’s all that he thinks Steve wanted him to do. 

“The shield?” Sam goes. His eyes widen at the implication. 

It’s a double whammy, a conflict of interest for Sam. Steve’s gone. But Sam’s now Captain America. But Steve’s _happy_ there in the past. He chose the past, so you can’t be too sad for him. 

Bucky know he’s supposed to clasp Sam on the shoulder and squeeze. So he does, but only because he knows he’s supposed to. Bucky had known Steve was gonna leave but somehow it’s still hard. Hard to even function. “You’ll be a good Cap,” Bucky says, trying to inject faith into it. “Steve said you would be.”

Sam’s face lights up at that. Bucky steps away. God, it’s like he’s wearing a human suit. Why’s it so hard to breathe?

*

He’s told that after the snap, there was trash everywhere and kids walking around with haunted eyes in the streets, heard that it was just trees and weeds sprouting from the cracks of the concrete and the world turning upside-down in the same way that lakes do when the seasons decay. Cold and dead water at the bottom cycling to the top, sewers and down-trodden rising to the surface of the city with skeleton leaves and grit and grime. Everyone was dead or desolate because everything they knew was dead and desolate. 

Now it’s bustle and car honks and birds squawking and dogs woofing and gleaming windows and neon city life. Thanos is dead. The universe is saved. People are resuming their lives because the ones they love are alive and now everything’s right and perfect and gold.

Everything’s been put into play again, except for Bucky. Bucky’s never gonna see Stevie again. The world can’t turn when that’s true. 

*

The remaining Avengers go their own ways. It used to be Steve leading them, and even Stark had that faux-leader role of organising and funding them, and for a stint apparently Widow had taken to leader too. None of those three are left, so now the Avengers are scattered to the wind and collect like a sand storm only when Nick Fury or turmoil calls.

Barton lives with his family, Mrs. Stark looks after her child, Sam’s got a new purpose as Captain-

Why even think about all of them. Bucky doesn’t care, doesn’t give a fuck. He’s not an Avenger, no matter what they say. Not without Steve. 

That rage rises, nebulous and directed at nothing because there’s nothing he can _blame_. Without Steve the world isn’t the same. The _awareness_ that Bucky had of Steve is gone. He hadn’t realised it, but he’s always been _expecting_ Steve. He sits on benches and leaves a space for Steve to sit at. He sets the table for two. He sleeps on one side of his bed. Whenever he does something he thinks about how Steve’s gonna react when he tells him. A pigeon flies into the window and he’s opening his mouth to tell Steve about how that’s supposed to be unlucky or whatever, but then it hits him like a train. Steve’s not here. 

Whenever he’s out in the streets he thinks about going home, and home has always been where Steve is. It’s their barely-insulated house or the barracks or their quarters. The buildings and the settings shift but it’s always Steve. Always been that blond spit-fire punk. 

Somehow even his whole body aches all the time. It’s worse than missing a limb — Bucky would know. He misses this whole fundamental part of him. It’s not like missing his memories. He’s missing something so essential that it goes beyond the mental. He’s missing his link to the world. If being displaced from time and cryostasis wasn’t enough, being bereft of Steve is worse. 

Bucky’s always been watching and following Steve’s back. At first he followed that thin bird-like frame down the streets because he didn’t want Steve getting into trouble. Then he followed that broad back through the war because he was always gonna fight beside Steve. Then he was following that fleeting memory of Steve out the hell HYDRA had put him through. 

Now, Steve’s gone somewhere that Bucky can’t ever even hope to follow. 

*

He moves into Steve’s apartment after a week. When he steps just over the threshold of the doorframe his whole body seizes still and is gripped by the strength of memory. The _smell_ of Steve, filling up—

—the slam of cupboards. “Bucky!” Steve calls, through the house. It’s only a few rooms really so he doesn’t need to shout. It hurts Bucky because there’s the telltale wheeze when he calls out like that. “Where’d you put the plates?”

“On the top shelf,” Bucky says, stomping into the kitchen still in his boots so Steve won’t have to shout and strain. “The neighbour, yesterday, when she took the oranges in for us? Think she put them up there after she washed them.”

Stupid, ‘cuz the top shelf is out of Steve’s short reach. It strikes them both at the same time and he sees Steve’s face go mutinous when he attempts and is still an inch away. Bucky’s there in a moment. Considers reaching for it but then has a better idea. He grabs Steve by the waist and hoists him up — he’s so light, fuck, how can Bucky feed him more when they’re both always so hungry — and Steve makes a startled noise and then a laugh. In that moment Bucky’s face is pressed into Steve’s back and he _inhales_ and it’s all Steve, fuck, it’s all him—

Bucky stumbles into the apartment. He’s panting hard. He knows his heart rate’s shot past the range of acceptable. He unclenches his hand and realises he’s ripped a hole into the doorway where he’d clutched it too hard. The moment was so real. Bucky could’ve been back before the war, in his shitty run-down apartment with Steve. Is he dissociating? Is his mind leaving him? It’s been a week of Steve stepping through that portal and Bucky’s-

Bucky doesn’t know what he’s doing. Doesn’t even know why he’s come to Steve’s apartment. He needs _something_ , something of Steve. Something that’s not a newspaper article or headline or Captain America. He needs _Steve_. These memories are what he’s come seeking. But theydon’t make him feel better. They make him feel worse. They hollow him out. He feels so, so, hollow. Disoriented. In seeing that momentary scene he’s accidentally left some part of him behind. Crazy talk, because he’s already left the greatest part of him behind. No — the greatest part of Bucky left _him_. Steve’s gone and left him in the future. 

How could it ever get easier? It can’t. It won’t. It’s fuckin’ awful. 

He swallows the feeling rising in his throat and starts to explore the rest of the apartment. Everything is cast in a surreal glow of sunlight where Steve didn’t close the curtains when he left. There’s a thin layer of dust on the surfaces, on the books and the movies Steve’s left on the shelves. They’d watched movies, when they were trying to disentangle Bucky from HYDRA. It was an easy way to bond. Just the two of them, sitting side by side, in the dark, pretending they were focusing on the images and noises on the screen. 

There are still sketchbooks on the desk and bedside. The blankets are neatly tucked in. In the bathroom the shampoo is half-used. Bucky crouches down and opens it, just to smell, and then feels like a dirty sewer-creature, a rat, wading through the remnants of Steve pathetically to grasp his ghost. 

The worst part is that it _works._ Despite the dust the place has a _sense_ of Steve. Like any minute now, there could be the turn of a key in the lock and Steve would be toeing off his shoes at the threshold, and he’d look up and see Bucky and his face would light up in a smile. He’d put his keys on the table and he’d already be talking about his day. His morning run. The dogs that he pet at the park. What the other Avengers have been saying. 

But the turn of the key never comes and it’s just Bucky standing there in the apartment with his fingers curling and uncurling, standing there so still and just _willing_ , willing with all his might as though the sheer force of his will can reach across all of space-time and call Steve back. His will goes out into the void, aching and crying, and is answered by nothing. It’s just Bucky; Bucky and nothing. 

*

What did Bucky Barnes once do? Before the war he spent all his hours working to provide for himself and Steve, and when he wasn’t working he was trying to unwind the knots in his muscles by talking to the dames around town, sweeping them up in his arms to dance and letting that chase and momentary, carnal pleasure take him apart. His memories of the before are still hazy, and Bucky doesn’t know whether or not he can trust them completely. He thinks that they’re right but he can never be sure. He thinks that he’s always come home to Steve, even when loose-limbed, and stood there watching the rise and fall and wheeze of Steve’s chest before he tucked himself behind Steve, letting their knees align. Steve’s feet were always cold, so Bucky would rub them with his own, and they’d huddle under the rag-blanket and Bucky would bury his nose in Steve’s hair and think that this was home, this was where he always came back to. 

During the war their time was spent on missions, on sitting around the campfire with the Howling Commandos, on taking apart his gear and making sure it was all in pristine condition, and trekking through the mud and the gunfire with steel resolve, with the hammering of his heart every time they all made it back in one piece, every time he saw Steve again, dirt in his hair, his eyes hard. No matter what body Steve had, his eyes were always the same. So determined, no matter what. 

Wonders briefly what Steve would’ve done if he _knew_ -

Don’t think about that, Bucky. Don’t. It’ll tear you apart. 

You’re already falling apart, what else could fucking-

During HYDRA his time was spent in cryostasis and murder. He shot people, he knifed people, he slit people’s throats, he poisoned people, he strangled people, he tortured people, he bombed people. He moved like a shadow. He was strapped to a chair. He splintered apart.

After HYDRA, he was put together again like a broken mirror. Forever fucked, but that was just how things worked. Something shitty happens to you and you can’t just spend your life wishing it didn’t happen. It’s happened. He can’t deny HYDRA destroyed Bucky Barnes and twisted him into the Winter Soldier so that now he’s an amalgamation of both. He can’t take it all back. Even Steve had accepted it eventually. Couldn’t turn back the fact that Bucky wasn’t just Bucky anymore and now there’s a killer licking through his veins all the time. Can’t undo HYDRA. Just move on, make something new and better.

Thought Steve accepted shit, but no– Steve wouldn’t accept the fact that he’d loved Peggy. Fuck, had the chance to turn back time, and he went back to _Peggy_ -

Don’t think about it too hard, Barnes. You’ll go mental. 

He _is_ mental. Fuck. He’s crawling up the walls of his own head. The apartment starts to swirl around him and he thinks he’s got to leave. He has to accept, isn’t that right? He can’t change Steve’s choice, just as Steve couldn’t purge the Winter Soldier from Bucky. He just has to accept it and live on. He just has to reform his life. 

Can’t keep clinging. 

But he does. Despite it all, he does. He lives in Steve’s apartment, haunting the rooms and the corridors. 

*

Despite knowing what Bucky Barnes used to do, he doesn’t know what to do. Right now there’s no threat, although he supposes bits of HYDRA and others are still out there. That dirty facet of human nature, can’t ever wipe it out, can only contain it, like Bucky with that dark part of him. He just has to contain it, as SHIELD tries to contain HYDRA. 

Right now there’s no mission to be had and Bucky doesn’t know what to do. He goes out on a run, pretending to be Steve. He takes the stairwell down and runs into Steve’s neighbour who asks where’s the young man who usually lives up there in forty-five and Bucky’s throat goes tight and stuffed and he shoves past her without another word. 

Outside it’s so loud, cars honking and this great undercurrent of noise that’s just the city breathing and heaving. A loudspeaker cries in the distance somewhere, sirens call, birds and mouths moving. Before it was never like this, and the people weren’t like this, talking into their cellphones and morphing and dressed like this—

It’s like he’s regressed, except he doesn’t know what point he’s regressed to. Which past is he looking at anymore? Doesn’t know what his past is supposed to be. It shifts like a million-headed chimera, flickering through fake memories and real memories and shattered bits of memories and memories that Steve’s told him. 

_Move_ , Bucky, move. Or the thought will catch up to you. He starts to stride, but breathing’s hard. He has to be careful. His mind’s in a delicate balance, and staying too still will let that monster catch up to him, and moving too fast will tire him out and when he’s not careful the thoughts will come back. 

_Steve’s gone Steve’s gone Steve’s gone-_

Just like everything and everyone else. Maybe Brooklyn and his home’s gone, maybe all those dames in the past are gone, maybe the war’s gone, maybe the cold rusty apartment’s gone, maybe all that time’s gone but Stevie’s never really been _gone_. Even in the war and when Bucky was on the experimental table—

The experimental table. 

—It’s there, dreadfully cold, arsenic stinging his nostrils. Strapped down by the wrists and the legs with a tight band over his chest. The pneumonia rattles his lungs full of slime and he feels feverish and burning up at the same instant that it’s too fucking cold. 

Hasn’t eaten in over a week and his tongue’s clogging up his throat, feels like, but he can’t stop coughing either, but because he’s on his back he just spits up the blood and mucus into his mouth and it makes him gag and he has no option but to swallow it back down again. Zola’s pushed needles in him, between the muscle of his shin and his bone. Whenever he tenses he can feel them there, these intrusions under his skin. Another one is pushed into the underside of his jaw and another into the soft flesh of his throat. Those coughs of his remind him sharply of their metal presences, the chemicals they’re dissolving into him. 

Bucky lies on the table and thinks about death, death, and death, thinking about his ma, Rebecca, Steve, (Becca, Stevie) — at least they’re not here. He doesn’t realise that Zola’s stuffing all his papers away and clattering out of the room because he’s too busy pretending he’s already in a morgue. He’s concentrates on the pain crawling like bugs inside his skeleton. He’s so cold, fuck, and there are so many pieces of steel and chemical cocktails in him. He can feel his internals churning, trying to liquify, oh god, what if he melts from the inside? 

He shrinks away from the face that appears above him at first, but slowly sound comes in. “Bucky!” he hears. Someone’s crying out for him in desperation. The cry is so familiar. Bucky knows he has to get to that voice. He has to stop that voice from sounding so desperate and afraid. “Bucky!” 

The needles are being slid out of his skin. The restraints are being popped. “Steve?” Bucky slurs, because it can’t be real. Everything is warm when he’s caught in a tight hug. Isn’t Steve supposed be back at home, safe? 

“Buck,” Steve says again, reverently. “Thought you were dead.”

“Thought you were bigger,” Bucky says, nonsensically, clinging to these huge broad shoulders. Steve helps him stand and can’t seem to keep his hands off Bucky. Keeps holding his arms, supporting his back, watching him worriedly as he staggers. He’s _there_ , his presence so real. He’s rescued Bucky. He’ll always be there. ’Til the end of line. 

’Til the end—

—Bucky’s out on the street, breathing not-dusty air, blinking harsh sunlight out of his eyes. He’s not in Zola’s hands. It’s 2023. In 2018 he died after Thanos snapped. In 1945 he died after he fell off a train. In 1940 Steve was rejected from military duty. (If only Steve never went to the war. They’d both be dead by now, just how they would’ve wanted, in their graves as heroes. Not alive like this, alive and aching.)

He stands there in a daze remembering the imprint of Steve’s voice and Steve’s hands. Time rushes by. It floods by. It escapes him, escapes his grasp. 

In a burst of movement he’s running, the pound of his boots against the concrete. He should’ve changed into running shoes or anything appropriate so at least he could give off the guise of exercise. The city’s too big for anyone to give a damn about him, though, hair in his eyes, running, coming up to the intersection, the park’s nearby, someone’s walking their dog, Steve chose this place so he could be close to the park and do his laps every morning before the sun even opened its eye, someone’s on a motorcycle— Steve and his motorcycles, fuck.

There’s a howl of brakes when someone has to slam them to avoid hitting Bucky and he can hear the driver cussing him out. They think that hitting him would’ve sent his body flying across the hood, smashing into the metal front of the car, bones crumpling in a wash of blood, but in reality _they_ would’ve been killed because there needs to be a bigger force to destroy Bucky like that. But the squeal of the car stops him in his tracks and brings him back into the moment. He realises that he should apologise to the driver, but when he turns his head to stare at the lady at the wheel her knuckles go tight and white and her expression morphs into a familiar one of terror and she backs into reverse. 

He must look like something terrible. Realising this, he slumps in defeat, even if he doesn’t know what he was trying to fight. He returns to the apartment, back down the street where people are staring at him, clunking his way up the staircase.

Everything is the same but different. They’re still in Red Hook but it’s not Red Hook anymore. It’s that nostalgia just on the other side of this sheer glimmering veil of a wall that ruins him. He remembers having to clatter up a narrower and steeper concrete staircase once upon a time. There’d be all the water stains on the walls and this smell from the smokers who’d sometimes linger around. When he ran into someone else on the stairs, he’d twist his upper body just a little to make sure he kept his hands to yourself. There would be trash and bits of debris gathered at the seams of things, where the stairs met the wall, where the stairs met each other, and little patches of indiscriminate colour from stains of history. The railing was peeling with paint and no one ever used it except for kids who didn’t know better and were immediately scolded by their parents. The bars of the railings had been bent, and they cast grilled shadows whenever the lights decided they’d be working. 

It’s not like that anymore. The stairs aren’t worn down. The railing is one long line of unbroken paint and metal. The neighbours greet each other when they pass. There are windows at the landings where the sunlight streams in. Bucky unlocks the door to Steve’s apartment and closes and locks it behind him and goes to the bathroom. He looks like a ragged, pathetic excuse for a human being. His hair is in knots and gritty, his eyes are too sunken, his mouth is a taut line, his scruff is uneven. He’s gaunt and hunched and carries this dark shadow with him. He hasn’t changed his outfit since the day Steve left. 

Unpeeling the glove from his hand shows the gleam of metal. It looks like a tumour extending from his shoulder. All of a sudden he’s taking everything else off. Belt buckles clatter to the bathroom floor. Things unzip. His shirt comes off over his head. Laces undone. Boots toed off. Trousers pushed down. He doesn’t recognise his body in the mirror. Scars and muscle, the definition of bone. What has this body seen? The push and pull of years, needles and steel, bullets and blood, shrapnel and bruises and cuts and beatings, ropes and knives, cryostasis, ground to dust and reformed, the gentle hands of dames or their nails clawing his back. Or Stevie’s hand, holding his. Clutching at his arm. Drawing him in for a hug. His body doesn’t know that touch anymore. 

Into the shower he goes. It splutters at first from disuse but warms quickly and he dumps as much of Steve’s body wash and shampoo onto himself and tries to massage that smell into his skin. He’s losing Steve. He can’t, but it’s inevitable. 

He has to let him go. Has to, has to. At least let him fade on your own volition than try to grasp him and fail. 

At least let go of the train instead of try to hold on and _fall_ -

Pain splits his head at that thought. There’s a memory there, but it’s too soon, still too raw. He can’t reach it yet but he’s not sure he even wants to. It throbs in his head like it’s alive, tearing things into the walls and drawing lines. It hurts until his knees feel weak and he has to put a hand against the wall for support. 

It eases slowly, and by then he’s been in the shower a long time. Should get out. They’ll run out of hot water at this rate, and he likes to save the warm water for Steve. 

*

He cleans the apartment. It hurts him to do. This bed was how Steve left it. He feels like the dust is Steve’s. This dust had shared the same air as Steve before he left. But Bucky vacuums it up anyway. He tells himself that Steve would want it liveable. This way he can further fool himself into thinking Steve would be back any moment. Bucky’s just keeping it occupied for him. 

He wipes down the table and the countertops, the desk, the shelves and the windowsills. He vacuums the carpet and cleans out the fridge. He waters the plants with a cup. He goes to the laundry room at the base of the building and washes out his clothes and hangs them out to dry on the small deck space Steve has. He shaves the start of a beard on his face. By then the sun is starting to set. Bucky triple-checks the locks on the doors and then slides into bed. 

It smells like Steve — or maybe Bucky’s starting to forget, and just thinks that everything’s like Steve. 

*

He dreams of Steve coaxing Bucky into his arms. Just when Bucky is warm and safe and tucking his face into Steve’s shoulder, Steve’s strong firm hands come up and snap his neck. 

*

That morning when Bucky is getting dressed into his now-clean clothes and has the kettle on because Steve left tea leaves in one of the cupboards, there’s a sharp rap at the sliding-glass door of the deck. Sam is there with the shield on his back. Immediately pain lances through Bucky’s head but he hides it by nodding and turning away and swiping a clean cup and pretending to wash it in the sink. He still remembers the first rendition of Steve’s stupid shield, before it was changed into that circular glorified trashcan lid. It was like a giant badge. Had the stripes, of course, and the stars up top. Bucky remembers it well because it was the shield Steve carried when he saved Bucky from Zola. 

That first time Bucky had seen him after the serum, Steve’s body was unfamiliar, but his demeanour was still the same. Steve was still fighting like it was just a big lot of bullies they were against. His chest had become broad and defined and he no longer wheezed. Bucky had hugged him tight and for the first time Steve wasn’t a bundle of bones and skin and chill under his hands. Instead he was furnace-like in heat and he was strong. He was so damn strong. His body reflected what had been there in his heart this whole time and now _everyone_ could see it. 

Steve had never known, but that day when Bucky was rescued and the first time he was back in his tent, in his undershirt and nothing more than boxers and finally alone, he’d curled up in the dark and sobbed ugly and open-mouthed into his knees. He was out from Zola’s hands, no more pain and starvation and dehydration and torture, and _Stevie-_ god, Stevie was big and strong so Bucky didn’t have to worry about his pay being too little and having to steal medication for Steve’s cough anymore, didn’t have to worry about lying to Stevie about where he got the meds, didn’t have to worry about coming back to find that Stevie had _died_ because resources all across the country were being strained and didn’t have to worry about the pain in Stevie’s eyes anymore when he felt weak or came back beat up or was rejected from enlistment _again_. Bucky was so relieved that all he could do was sob. He was alive and Steve was alive. Steve was more alive than he’d ever been. He was so fucking relieved. Bucky was safe and where he had always intended to be. By Steve’s side. And finally people could see Steve like how Steve deserved to be seen. Even if they died in the war they’d die side by side and in that way they’d wanted, fighting for something they were proud to fight for.

“That cup’s gotta be squeaky at this point,” Sam says. Bucky stops, stunned. It’s 2023. In 2018 Thanos snapped. In 1945 he fell from a train. He turns the faucet off. He puts the cup into the drying rack. He puts the rag he was using to wash it on its hook. He turns around. Sam’s seated himself at the kitchen table and he doesn’t look tired. Of course — he and Steve had always been morning people. Them and their runs. Bucky remembers. Sam looks like he’d been glowing, happy now that he’s Captain America — just as Steve had after he’d gotten the serum and saved people for the first time — but it’s marred currently by a frown of concern. 

“Sorry,” Bucky says. He tries to find some semblance of appearance. Sam’s actually caught him on a better day, he thinks. The apartment is clean. Bucky is wearing clean clothes. Bucky’s shaved. His hair is washed. He’s slept. He looks like he’s functioning fine. Bucky’s lucky. He can keep hiding it for longer. “Yesterday I nearly got hit by a car.”

“You alright?” 

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Just– not used to things, you know? Spooked me. It woulda killed the lady inside if she hit.”

“I get it,” Sam says, placated. Bucky tries not to let his relief show. He doesn’t suspect a thing.

He doesn’t have any food in the fridge but doesn’t want to give away to Sam that he hasn’t been eating. “Want some tea?”

“I’m good,” Sam laughs. “I don’t have that long. I didn’t peg you for a tea type of guy.”

Bucky shrugs. Doesn’t have a good explanation. Tea’s good. If you can nab a couple of leaves off someone, you can boil them again and again so it lasts longer. You don’t need any sort of fancy machines like you do for coffee. It’s a good hot drink for people who have nothing. 

He pours himself tea while Sam watches, then takes a seat opposite him. “What’re you here for this early?”

“I’ve got just a little time before I have to dip out. Fury says that he wants you in for a mission. And, not gonna lie, I wanted to see how you were holding up.”

“Why’re you worrying about me? We’d talked about it beforehand and I made my peace.” Sips his tea, lies through his teeth. “Trust me, I _encouraged_ him. I saw how smitten he was for Peggy back in the day. We all know Steve deserves to have something good for himself for once.”

Because Sam’s happy for Steve, happy at Steve’s happy ending, Sam’s smiling slightly. “Gotcha,” he says, and tosses a manila file down on the table. He picks up the shield and Bucky can’t help but follow the motion. “Look, I gotta run. Take a look over this when you’re up for it. Fury’s waiting for you to ring. Also, come get drinks with Clint and I sometime? Next Friday?” Bucky nods absently. 

Once Sam leaves, Bucky stands staring at the file, locked in conflict. What is he waiting for? Pretending for? Pretending that Steve is gonna come back? Bucky’s keeping his home warm for him. Bucky’s waiting for him. Steve isn’t coming back because he’s gotten to his happily ever after. It’s Bucky’s fault that he’s got nothing other than Steve. See, Steve’s got–

Steve’s got _friends_. Stark, Wilson, Bruce Banner, Thor, Barton. Those were all his friends. Steve had a _team_ , just like when they were back on the Commandos. Steve’s got a good smile and plays nice with a team. Steve’s got a lady. Steve’s got his own apartment. Steve’s got his own routine. Steve’s got his own life and Bucky _doesn’t_.

Steve’s got his own life—

—Bucky doesn’t hear her approach. That’d be because it’s quite noisy, but he likes the noise and the rhythm of dance. He has to lean in to Steve to hear what he’s saying and that, paradoxically, creates a smaller bubble around them. He only realises she’s there because Steve stops talking and rises from his seat and Bucky instinctively follows. 

She’s there looking gorgeous. Bucky’s never met her before, but clearly Steve has, because she addresses him with, “Captain.”

Steve says, “Agent Carter.” There’s a slight uptick to his tone and professionalism that means he’s trying to impress — and that tips Bucky off instantly. Steve’s interested in this lady. Just for that, Bucky starts to appraise her, from her professional dark eyes to her red dress to her careful curls. 

“Howard has some equipment for you to try,” she says. Her voice is accented and delicate like the liquid edge of a knife. “Tomorrow morning?”

“Sounds good.” Despite his casual words, Steve is much more subdued and measured than when he’s joking around with Bucky. Like he’s dimming the lights around them. 

They don’t take their eyes off each other. Steve’s gaze darkens. All breath escapes Bucky. Oh. So this is what it’s like, then. When Bucky was under Zola’s care they must’ve met. He looks away and pretends he’s interested in the people dancing on the other side of the stained glass.

“I see your top squad is preparing for duty,“ she comments lightly. 

“You don’t like music?” 

“I do, actually.” She pauses. She’s got strings. Bucky can _feel_ them, strung alongside the tension pulling taut between this Agent Carter and his best friend. She’s trying to decide the best way to indicate her interest in Steve. “I might even, when this is all over, go dancing.” 

Steve is still staring at her, his eyes shadowed, hooded. Bucky can’t stand this, but leaving would be so damned obvious and uncharacteristic of him. The silence stretches, stretches, tension– Steve just drinking in the beauty of her face as she calmly accepts his gaze— “Then what are we waiting for?” he says, to break that silence. His own voice sounds wrong and harsh and interruptive in his ears.

She doesn’t even glance at him; she replies cooly and instantly. “The right partner.” Steve definitely understands _that_ , because his lips part, just slightly. “0800, Captain.”

She’s already turning away, so _confident_ , so _controlled_ , so _poised_ , when Steve says, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be there.”

Pain blooms in his chest like the dissolve of blood in water. He can still taste the electric crackle between them. “I’m invisible,” Bucky says as soon as she’s out of earshot. He’s invisible to _Steve_. The pain intensifies tenfold. Bucky can’t believe he’s taken his position at Steve’s side for granted. He’s always been trying to get Steve gals, but it’s never been like this, even when Steve’s been with them. Bucky has never vanished so utterly and wholly.

The instinctive reaction is snarling, ugly, jealousy and irrational anger. Bucky puts Steve first. They’ve always put each other first. They’ve always had each other’s backs, no matter what. In their darkest times, they’ve been there for each other. Now there’s this beautiful lady and all the years fall away and Bucky comes second place, because as the best friend you can never hope to hold a candle to love.

But the more dominant emotion that quickly sweeps out the envy is _fear_. Fear builds like a wave in his head. Steve is slipping from him fast. The first night of being freed from Zola and he’s realising — after sobbing in relief that Steve was healthy now — that because Steve is healthy- he doesn’t _need_ Bucky anymore. Bucky’s outdated. Steve’s been surviving without him. He’s been more than surviving. He’s flourishing. 

“I’m-“ he says, trying to express it for just a moment, the monumental weight of this pain that threatens to eclipse everything, but switches track when that pain and that fear turns sharper. Lies. Deflect. Turn it into a joke. Lighten his tone. Hide the truth. Be happy for Stevie. “I’m turning into you. It’s a horrible dream.”

“Don’t take it so hard,” Steve says, grinning. He’s lapsed back into his usual tone and there’s a laugh in his voice. “Maybe she’s got a friend.” 

Steve thinks he’s paying Bucky back for all those double dates. It’s not about her, Steve, you _dunce_. It might include her but that’s because it’s about _you_.

He’s terrified. Terrified that Steve’s gonna leave him. Steve already is leaving— Agent Carter walks in, Bucky vanishes. Now that Steve’s Captain America, bigger things are calling him. Things that are bigger than Bucky. 

Steve’s turned back into the happy joking lad he knows, but the hopeless mood remains over Bucky all the same. He’s realised that one day Steve’s smile won’t be for him, and that day is drawing closer with terrifying speed like a train hurtling over cold steel rails. He hears its howl.

—Breathing hard. 2023. 2018, the snap. 1945, the train.

Bucky needs something else. He needs another purpose that isn’t Steve because Steve isn’t even _here_ anymore. He’s gone to the past. Just as Bucky vanished in the face of Peggy once, all those years ago in that bar, he’s came second place again. Steve chose to live his life out with Peggy in the past rather than stay with Bucky. That’s just how it is. 

He’s gotta move on. 

He opens the file. Fury wants him to assassinate someone. Killing. He can do that. 

*

Everyone thinks Steve’s a saint. _The_ saint. He’s the embodiment of perfection, you know. He fought Hitler and his Nazis, and _everyone_ knows Hitler and the Nazis are evil. He’s brave and he’s beautiful. He helps little kids. He rescues prisoners of war. He hates bullies. He’s chivalrous to women. He’s kind to everybody. He’s whip-crack smart. He’s the only one other than Thor who’s worthy of lifting Mjolnir. He’s freedom. He’s resistance. He’s perfect.

He doesn’t drink and drive. He doesn’t have a temper. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t do drugs. He doesn’t steal. He doesn’t assault. He doesn’t murder. He doesn’t lie. And he most certainly isn’t one of those fairies who sleeps with other men. 

Everyone thinks that Steve’s a saint because America branded him like a damn barrel of oil shipped off for marketing, so quick to slap ‘Captain America’ and their idea of perfect on him. Sometimes Bucky, 2023, standing on the street in ragged jeans and smelling the stink of steam wafting out of the manholes on the sidewalk, flat-out _hates_ America. Steve’s not America. Fuck off. Steve is _Steve_. 

And Steve knew it, too. That’s why he liked the nickname _Cap_. Yeah, he’s captain. Just captain. Whenever you need one. 

God, all that shit about Mr. Perfect was wrong.

*

It’s dark out when Bucky drives to his mission location. There aren’t no streetlights out here on the highway, so the road is just pitch-black tar and the only guides he has are the stars. The asphalt sea swims beneath the wheels, and he remembers—

Saturday night, out at their encampment: the trees are dark sentinels, the snow started coming in a few hours ago, and Bucky can’t sleep for the nightmares and thoughts of being forgotten like a ghost. He slips out of his tent and stands there in his boots and a jacket, breathing steam and looking up at the stars. They weren’t so bright back in Brooklyn. 

Snow’s starting to blanket everything in shades of shadow. Texture washed out in featureless white. The world ends thirty feet away, but within that range of sight is Steve like a statue in a storm. Bucky doesn’t say a word as he approaches, though Steve must hear the crunching of his steps because he turns to look. 

The lens of his eyes catch the light feline-sharp, and his face in profile is a sketch of a fine line of fire and tender downy skin. He’s like some sort of ethereal winter strider come from another world, cast by the glow of a cigarette held between his lips. 

“You could seduce the devil lookin’ like that, Stevie,” Bucky says, voice still raspy. His heart’s beating sickeningly loud in his ribcage. “If it were the she-devil, that is.”

Stevie takes it between his fingers makes it look effortless, tipping his head down to laugh. It’s an exhale type of laugh — a sinful mixture of smoke and steam. He looks like vitality wrapped into one shadowy untouchable figure. Fire burns under Bucky’s skin. 

“’S how you always looked, Buck.” Steve must’ve been smoking for a while, because it’s got just the slight edge of roughness to it. “It can’t hurt my lungs now, so I thought I’d try.” He laughs softly again. “Think Peggy would find it attractive? I know the gals back at home sure thought it was when you did.”

“Dunno. Look, Stevie, only thing I’m seducing nowadays is lady death, and I’m trying to keep her _off_ my tail.”

“You say that, but I know you miss having a smoke. They’re hard to get. I only got them because- Captain.” Steve shrugs and then gestures. “C’mere.” And like Bucky’s got a hook in his throat, he goes wherever Steve tells him to go. Always. 

An arm comes around his shoulder to pull him in. The cigarette slides between his lips, and maybe it’s because they’re close enough that he can feel the heat of Steve’s body, or because it’s in the dark and Bucky can pretend that no one will ever know, or because Steve’s fingers rest against his lips, firm and warm; but Bucky feels something deep in his gut give a stir. The cold’s the only thing that stops his cock filling there and there.

_Steve’s_ pushing it into his mouth, and he thumbs teasingly at Bucky’s lip, enough to brush at the wet inside. “Come on, Buck.” 

It’s a command. His dick is half-hard but it’s hidden under his clothes. Bucky takes a deep breath and feels smoke fill his lungs. 

“Thought so,” Steve murmurs. His eyes are locked on Bucky’s mouth. The sculpted planes of his face are obvious in the cigarette’s glow. “You look better than me doin’ it.”

Bucky only gives him a weak little smirk in return and then balances the cig between his forefinger and thumb. “Bullshit. You can’t see yourself, punk.” Wants to rut up against Steve, have Steve’s firm hand plunder him inside until he’s wet and panting. 

It’s only with Steve that Bucky thinks these terrible things. They’d dissemble him if they knew. They’d strip him of his rank, they’d send him into therapy, they’d give up on him and let him die, they’d talk about him in disturbed whispers. His family would be so ashamed. 

Steve takes it from him again and very deliberately purses his lips around that cylinder of pure filth, touching something that’s been in Bucky’s mouth. Might as well have kissed. Maybe they’re thinking the same thing in that moment because there’s a contemplative silence before either one of them speaks again.

“Go to sleep, Buck. We gotta go clear out that town tomorrow.” Steve is quiet. He has to look _down_ at Bucky now because he’s so damn tall. Looks down with his eyes half-shut and snow catching on his lashes like icy kisses that melt and fade quickly.

“Can’t if I know you’re out here brooding here like a dark storm.”

“Or ‘cause of the nightmares?”

“Nah,” he lies. “My brain’s got a pretty crappy imagination. It sucks at making nightmares.”

“Buck,” Steve says, more softly, now. Bucky doesn’t have to _imagine_ the nightmares. He’s got first-hand experience to them. And they both know it.

“We got a psychic connection, Stevie,” he deflects. “You start thinking hard enough and I can’t sleep, and trust me— you’re out here thinking _real_ loud.” Steve can make up all this bull about being out here because he wants to try a smoke, but he’s also hiding whatever’s keeping him awake. 

Steve smiles weakly at him. He shakes the cigarette out. Its embers die before they even touch the frozen ground. 

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll go to sleep too, then.”

Steve wasn’t some sort of saint. Steve kept his secrets and had this sinful smile and smoked in the dark just to see if it made beautiful women like Peggy Carter and twisted boys like Bucky want to kiss him with a mouth that tasted of ash. 

—2023, Bucky clenches his right hand tighter around the wheel, grits his teeth, and drives. 

The memories keep coming like mile markers. 

*

What registers first is the unmistakable stink of blood. Bucky catches one glimpse of Steve like a crumpled doll by the dumpster, then his eyes dart to the person walking away from Steve. The guy is rolling his shoulder. The smugness of his expression makes Bucky’s bloodlust roar. He raises his fists and cracks the dumbass’ skull across the wall and the guy gives a horrific shout just as his head connects with the brick. 

Instantly Bucky realises he’s been caught; he whirls around, but not before footsteps fill his ears and hands seize his collar and wrench him back hard, and although he twists in their grasp, he hadn’t realised there were so _many_ just waiting for their friend to get back and he’s shoved to the ground. 

“Think you’re tough, punk?” They’re around his age, unarmed, not street rats but poor teenagers looking for people to beat down. 

“Shut the hell up!” Bucky snarls and lashes at them like a wildcat. He’ll take them one at a time, dragging one down and punching him in the face, splitting his lip, breaking his nose, until he can’t tell whose blood is on his knuckles. The rest of them kick at him while he tries, bruising his ribs, sending blood streaming down his lips when he feels something in his jaw come loose. Until he grabs a leg and hauls them down, this big heavy weight crashing into him, and Bucky’s ruthless— he puts his hands around that stupid neck and _squeezes_ until there are hands scrabbling at his and the guy’s got his mouth open and gasping like a fish and Bucky is grunting because the blows raining down on his back are starting to hurt.

“Back off,” Bucky spits, “or I’ll kill him! Watch me, I will, I’ll fuckin’ strangle this stupid fuckin’ neck!” 

There’s a rush of feet and movement in the ring of boys around him, but there’s blood in Bucky’s eyes so it’s a little hard to see. But the next thing he knows, there’s a flash, it’s _metal_ , someone got a _knife_ , and Bucky’s world goes narrow. Everything is self preservation now. He’s rolling over, pulling the boy beneath him above and doesn’t even register the knife sliding in, but feels the blood suddenly warm dripping over them. 

Someone starts to shout. The body in his hands starts to scream. The blood pours faster, all over Bucky’s clothes. Most of them are running, they’re panicking. They just stabbed their friend and they’re running, the cowards. Some of them stay — there’s a boy staring at Bucky and he’s holding the bloody knife in shaking hands because they know in some basic, feral way that they need to remove the evidence, and he feels the pressure of his friends and accomplices urging him on. 

Somehow through the din, Bucky hears a low groan from Steve and sees Steve’s form stir and lift his head. Bucky shoves the boy he’s holding towards his friends and they don’t move to catch him. They try to avoid him, afraid of acknowledging what they’ve done. It’s the perfect distraction. 

If he had a clearer head, he would’ve picked Steve up and ran the other way into the open street, but instead the blood and anger’s pumping in his veins and he doesn’t even want the _chance_ of these fuckers getting near Steve. So Bucky throws himself at them and wrestles the knife out of the boy’s hands, but he underestimates how much blood is on the handle because it goes skittering away and they’re back on him again, and Bucky’s dishing it out as best as he’s got until he steps on the arm of the downed boy and _fuck_ goes down, red, bites someone and someone slashes his shin open and then his arm. He howls in anguish. His face is all full of blood that he’s blinking away when _finally_ he wrestles the knife into his hand and cuts open someone from cheek to cheek, right under the eyes, and then he realises that the last of them are running and that the alley has at least four unconscious people in it. 

Bucky’s running on the fumes of adrenaline. He’s gotta get Steve out of there because the boys might come back. Drops the knife. He gets Steve’s arm over his shoulders, then his knees buckle and his head smashes against the brick wall because he just can’t catch himself in time. 

Opens his eyes and he’s staring at Steve’s bloody shirt. Panic shoots through his system. Did he miss a wound on Stevie? No, no, no, but he feels Steve’s hands around him, trying to pick him up, and he realises that it’s just the blood all over him that’s smeared onto Steve’s shirt. “Come on, Buck,” Steve’s saying. “Get up!”

Bucky tries. He really does. He tries not to look at his limbs where he knows he got knifed but he gets a glimpse of an open wet wound and some whiteness that he thinks can’t possibly be bone. Is it the inner layer of fat?

“ _Dumbass_!” Steve explodes. “Why the _fuck_ didn’t you just run in the first place?!”

“Don’t give me that!” Bucky shouts right back. His throat is hoarse and wet with blood. Shock is setting in. When Steve’s angry he gets stronger, because he pulls Bucky to standing. There’s dried blood in Steve’s hair where they must’ve hit him and knocked him out. There’s not that much. Relief. “Would you have run? Huh?! Yeah, riddle me that, Stevie!” 

“If they had a knife and you were down and I could pick you up, then _yeah_! I would’ve! I would’ve run because they had a _knife_ , Buck! A–“

“A knife isn’t gonna stop me, Stevie, I’m _fine_ -“

“Because you got _lucky!_ God, how thick’s your skull?!” Steve’s hands on him are shaking. His knuckles are bloody, and they’re still wet, which means they’re Steve’s wounds. “We ain’t kids anymore, Buck! And they weren’t kids either — and there were at least ten of them! You don’t get it, do ya? It just takes one person to aim a little higher and _fuck_ that’s your throat open an’ you’re _dead_ because you couldn’t stop being an _idiot_!”

“ _You_ picked the fight, Stevie! You were by the damn wall looking like someone crumpled you up and tossed you out like a paper bag! Why the hell are you blamin’ this on me?”

“Because they didn’t wanna kill anyone! You could see it, you fuckin’ dumbass, they were _scared_ and I’d already stopped them from doing what they were gonna do and I was just gonna get beat up a little but then you come in and _threaten_ and escalate so of course they’re gonna fight back proper and _dangerous_!” Steve takes a big rattling breath and for a moment Bucky’s afraid he’s gone too far, because that inhale sounds like hell. “I don’t pick fights where they’ll actually _kill_ me, Buck! I know it seems like I get in fights all the time but I’m not actually _that_ stupid. I wanna stop the assholes with the guns and the assholes with the knives and the assholes who put bodies under the docks but _I don’t, because I’m no use dead!_ ” He does dissolve into a coughing fit then. When Bucky rubs circles over his back, Steve shoots him a glare.

“I’m sorry, okay?!” Bucky says, in a frustrated way, thinking about how it’s not like they have much first aid back at home and how he’s going to have to sew his clothes back together. He really did fuck up. It’s just _impossible_ from him to walk away from someone beating up Steve .“I- I don’t know, I got all bull-headed, I thought they’d- _fuck_! I saw you ’n I just saw red!”

If Bucky died, Steve would try his damnedest to get himself into the army. He’d do anything to sneak himself in to try to find meaning. It’s because Steve lives for something greater than himself. Bucky knows it. He feels it right down to his bones.

If Steve died, Bucky wouldn’t be so heroic. He’d go to the highway just twenty minutes from their place and plummet from the ledge. 

Steve pulls Bucky closer to him, helping him walk even though Bucky’s so much bigger and heavier. “You’re so stupid,” he mutters. “God, you’re so fucking stupid, Buck. But so am I. Damnit, what are we gonna do with us?”

Bucky just laughs wetly into Stevie’s hair. “Dunno, Stevie. Dunno. I wish I knew.”

*

Steve wasn’t some sort of saint. Steve had a dirty mouth and a quick temper. Steve had anger like a storm and you damn well believe it was glorious to behold. 

*

Pulling women is an art that Bucky has cultivated to perfection. Head to a pub, or a cafe, or a club — anywhere where people know that there’s the possibility of being approached. Then he begins the art of flirting outrageously; he does get approached, yes, but in most cases he pursues. It’s expected for the man to. 

He has Steve with him today and they’re a few glasses in already. Steve did a favour for the bar owner a few days back, peeled away a couple of thugs when the guy was taking out the trash, and so they’re drinking on the house today. Since Steve was the one who did it, it’s a good excuse for Bucky to force him to come, and it’s nice — nice to see Steve looking proud of himself when the owner bustles over and tells Bucky how good of a guy this little lad is. 

It’s good. Good to get Steve with a bit of that liquid courage because it means he’s more open to laughing, and smiling, and nothing is prettier than Steve lookin’ happy. Bucky’s on a mission today. He’s gonna get them both laid, yeah. He’s gonna try to get them dates. He doesn’t want one himself, but it tends to be easier to pull women when he’s also a deal on the table. It backfires, sometimes. Sometimes the other gal is also too into Bucky and Steve just stands there as an onlooker the whole night. He always tries to convince Bucky not to feel bad, but Bucky does. Because Steve is lonely and Bucky’s trying to do right by him, damnit. 

There are these two brunettes who keep glancing over at Steve and Bucky’s booth. They’re not the only ones who are, but Bucky mentally scopes them out to be the most promising. He keeps chattering away with Steve for a while, constantly keeping a mental eye on whether the women are still looking. They are. A while later, Bucky slings an arm over Steve’s shoulder and whispers, lips practically kissing the soft curve of Steve’s ear, “How about we go over and see what those ladies want?” and Steve goes, “Okay.” which means that Steve has been watching them too, and has noticed their interest too. It makes Bucky swell with pride. 

Bucky works his charm. It’s not hard to do and it’s autopilot. He just lets his drawl come out, and he starts touching little by little, and he compliments and he flirts and he holds stares for too long, and before he knows it they’ve got a lady each and Bucky’s pushing open the door to the apartment that he cleaned up earlier. He’s buzzing, proud of himself, because one of the ladies — Yvonne? Or something — is actually _into_ Steve. Steve’s a little drunker than Bucky would like but otherwise, it’s a success.

Bucky’s got his lady in the living room on their couch while Steve’s in the bedroom, and he’s naked and calling her ‘baby baby’ because he forgot her name while she rides his dick and fondles his chest. He figures that she wants similar treatment so he gets a mouth on her breasts and really starts to pound her and she _screams_ when she comes. Bucky lets her milk it out and then pulls out where he’s still throbbing hard. She’s already getting her shirt and her shoes on before Bucky’s even come, and he gives her a questioning look. “What’s the hurry?” he says, feeling disoriented about the fact that she’s fully dressed and he’s bare from head to toe. Usually they suck him after they come. Has he been lacking?

“Yvonne’s already gone. She’s been waiting outside for a while,” the gal says, and Bucky’s stomach drops. She must’ve seen the other girl leave. His erection wilts. Steve. Come _on._ “I’m sorry. I really am, but I must get her home.”

His good mood evaporates just like that. Bucky throws on a pair of trousers and walks her to the door, giving a quick goodbye and kiss. Then he’s shoving open their bedroom door where Steve is sitting by the wall closet to the living room and is fisting his dick in his hand. Bucky’s never seen it so unabashed before and it’s flushed and disproportionately large for Stevie’s small fist but Bucky doesn’t linger because he’s too busy being mad. 

“What in fuckin’ hell,” he says. Steve squeezes his eyes shut. 

“I couldn’t,” Steve babbles, slurring slightly. “I couldn’t do t’her, she didn’t like it—“

“She was a hundred percent into you, Stevie! What are you talkin’ about?”

Those pretty blue eyes meet his, teary-eyed. “She didn’t like it rough, and I can’t _not_ give it rough. She wanted sweet talk and- and chocolates and stuff like that.”

All the air is punched from Bucky’s lungs at once. “What,” he says. He’s not wearing any underwear so he knows that the tent in his trousers is obvious. He can play it off as still being hard from the girl. But. Stevie gives it _rough_ and for some reason that thought is dizzying. 

“I’m so sorry, Buck, I know you try really hard to find a dame who’ll put up with someone like me and I fucked it all up again-“

“No no no no,” Bucky gushes, stepping closer because his usual instinct when it comes to Steve being down is to get closer. 

Except now- Steve has his dick in his hand, and he’s awfully, absurdly drunk enough that he won’t remember this tomorrow morning. Bucky knows, because he’s familiar with Steve’s tolerance and Steve _always_ forgets. Importantly, Bucky hasn’t gotten off yet either. The sexual frustration and desire comes to a heady cocktail. 

His voice drops to that low register he uses to lure people into bed. What is he doing? Bucky can’t keep his eyes off Steve’s moving hand. He’s got so much to lose but he’s also got stupid horny courage in his system right now. “Stevie, doll, anyone ever let you play dirty with them before?”

Stevie shakes his head. Bucky’s getting closer and closer to the mattress. Getting to his knees. “Anyone let you pull their hair? Fuck them hard?” 

Still shaking his head. Still pumping his fist over that big dick of his when Bucky leans in, shaking all over— can’t believe what he’s doing — and takes Steve into his mouth. It’s foreign and wet and big.

Nothing can prepare him for the guttural groan that comes from his best pal Steve, nor the fact that instantly there are two hands fisted in his hair and that Steve is fucking his throat like his life depends on it. Bucky gags and his eyes water and tries to loosen his throat and puts his hands on Steve’s thighs where he can feel them tensing. 

He wasn’t lying when he said he was rough, and he’s so damn thick that Bucky’s choking and gagging and accidentally nicking him with teeth. He thinks he can’t be hot at all — Bucky’s never done this, he ain’t one of those queers — but Steve keeps on going and is making these punched out moaning noises that have Bucky’s cock drooling in his pants like he’s twelve and has never come before. 

Steve is hot and heavy and weighty in his mouth, stretching his lips and shoving deep down his throat. His eyes are closed and that gives Bucky the courage to reach back and start fingering himself, just one pushing into the rim because there’s too much resistance for any more, and lets Steve use him like he’s a whore. He doesn’t know how long they go on for, only that Bucky comes without even putting a hand on his dick. It should be embarrassing, coming with a finger up his own ass while Stevie is shooting down his throat, his entire length twitching and pulsing against Bucky’s tongue, living the fantasy of that dick shooting inside him, filling Bucky up, marking him and seeding him and oh god, it’s so fuckin’ degenerate and dirty, but it’s exactly what gets Bucky to come harder than he ever has. 

As soon as it’s done, as soon as that heated haze wears off, Bucky bolts like he’s got hell on his tail. He wipes the come out of his trousers and paces out in the apartment landing until the chill sets in and he’s forced back inside.

The next morning, Steve, bleary-eyed and smiling, asks if they can have the girls over again because the one last night made him feel really nice but he can’t remember her name. Bucky says he doesn’t remember his girl’s name either and urges Steve to drop it until they both forget the entire thing happened.

And so Bucky’s crimes go unfound, unpunished. 

*

Pull the car into an unused lot. Prepare sniper rifle from the back. Check that it’s all in order. Ascend the fire escape of a nearby building. Need to eliminate the head first. He can deal with the rest later. 

Wind: 3 km/h, 203º. Target: 2, 561m. Drop-off: 92mm/m. Density: 1.224. Target is not moving. 

His arm whirrs as it accounts for measurable parameters. Ready.

*

He’s not supposed to be home that night. He has the night shift for dock work but some sort of police investigation swept in to search for smuggling. The employees in his sector were sent home without compensation, so Bucky’s in a bit of a foul mood. He thinks he can pick up an extra shift on Wednesday but the uncertainty of things keeps him stressed. 

It’s past midnight when he gets home, so he makes sure to enter quietly. He takes off his boots by the door and hangs up his jacket. The door to their bedroom is ajar and with the slant of moonlight shining through it, he realises Steve has someone in there with him. 

It’s a woman’s voice. Bucky freezes. Understanding fills him, tangled with some other feelings he can’t quite name. It hasn’t been long since Bucky’s put his guilty lips on Steve, but he still thinks about it regularly, and he’s thinking about it now. He won’t interrupt. He moves silently, stripping down and preparing to spend the night on the ratty couch that is too short for him and that he has to curl his legs to sleep on. 

Very quickly he realises that from his position he can see through the gap of the door. There are no windows in the living room, only one in the bedroom, and they don’t have curtains so the bedroom’s brighter than the living room and Bucky can see inside. At first it’s only indistinct shapes moving together and the sounds of a woman’s moaning. As his night vision improves, he realises that Steve has his back to Bucky’s vision. That’s Steve’s back wrapped by two slim calves and pale moonlight. That’s Steve’s back, flexing each time he thrusts downwards, and that’s sweat gleaming down the divot of his back. They’d rocking together heavy and fast. 

If he strains his ears he can hear Steve’s breathy grunting. Bucky knows he should roll over and bury his face into the couch but he can’t look away from the rhythmic, rapid, obscene movements. His eyes are drawn down to the point of connection between Steve and the woman where his dick has her spread around him and her entrance is drawn in and out with each stroke. Steve’s balls are tight and perk and swing with the movements. Steve’s ass is small and round and Bucky can barely make out the dark entrance of his hole. 

Thin and rakish, Steve in all his nudity and in motion is mesmerising, a force of determined nature. His narrow thighs flex and tremble but maintain their pounding. He uses his cock to its full length and plunges into her right to the base every time. The mattress beneath them shakes as Steve slams them together over and over. Her moans turn into pleading until she’s loud enough that even if Bucky covered his ears, he’d hear.

Bucky loses time, lying in the dark and watching furtively, feeling sick to his gut from his arousal. A voyeur, preying on trust.

*

In the summer, Steve with his honey-snow skin and blond-cut hair pulls Bucky to sin. It all drives Bucky insane: the colour of his delicate lips and the narrow line of his jaw, the elegant span of his clavicle and the shallow indent before his shoulder, the sunlight staining along his thin arms and the curl of his dexterous hands and the faint waves of ribs below skin and the implication of lean muscle. Steve goes about his day and clatters around the apartment, the dip of his hips just visible where his trousers don’t cover. 

Bucky is driven equally mad by the knowledge that Steve is a scrappy and fiery force of nature, ready to be covered in muck and mud and blood and wounds, blurry with pain and sweat and sex and death. Those lips get split and bite, that clavicle is broken, that skin is bruised, those hands clutch and fuck, those ribs are shattered. In the same way that he is finely gorgeous he is dangerous. 

Even after it all, even after the serum, Steve is still beautiful in the same way. He still has those butterfly-wing of eyelashes, still has that exquisite slant of jaw, still the swoop of collarbone, still golden where the sunlight blooms on his skin, still scrappy and fiery, only now he’s taller and thicker and has the eyes of a thousand women on him. 

He must be ignorant to allow Bucky to float around after him; Bucky, in all his monstrous truth, feeds on the mere presence of Steve like a bloated insect on pitiful wings. Some days it’s so strong that it replaces his heart, swelling behind his ribcage, and Bucky thinks that it must be visible on his skin like a brand. Instead, when Steve sees Bucky, his face lights up. His mouth quirks into a smile and he talks about his day. He talks about beautiful things he’s seen and ugly things he’s tried to stop. He’ll carry on, ignorant of Bucky’s hidden desire. 

And when that happens, that hideous thumping in Bucky’s chest eases, that monster in his loins tames, and that dark part of him slumbers. Only with Steve’s smile does Bucky flourish. He becomes cocksure Bucky, he becomes brave Bucky, he becomes what he _wants_ to become, soaking in the radiance of Steve like a flower so bereft of sunlight.

The pinnacle of Bucky is not the fear nor the women nor the guns nor the winter nor the smoke. It is _Steve_ — his ultimate perversion, his every lust and damnation. 

To lose Steve’s attention is unfathomable punishment. 

*

Hits so hard with the metal arm that the eye comes out of the socket. Then he cracks the man’s neck so that his head lolls uselessly and throws the body aside. There are shouts down the corridor, which means there are still people alive in the building. Bucky stalks the sounds with all the predatory grace of a bloodhound. 

He has the entrances barricaded and locked down and prowls the lower levels for his prey. When they come into sight, he fires, bright flashes of the muzzle flickering like firelight monsters across the walls. He doesn’t miss. After he’s downed them, he takes their guns but leaves them alive because their groaning and pleas for help draw more people. 

Bucky doesn’t know why he’s killing them. It’d been in all the mission file that Fury had given, and something about a human trafficking ring, but he’d skimmed it over, or he’d forgotten. 

Bucky forgets all the unimportant things — like this mission’s motive — but remembers what he wants to forget. Someone shoots at him through a plaster wall, but snake-quick Bucky deflects it with his arm and returns fire. He bursts through the wall itself to reveal a host of terrified faces and summarily guns them all down. 

More footsteps alert him up in the northern stairwell. Bucky vaults over desks and fallen chairs to reach it. He sees them trying to pry open the fire escape, then they splatter the door with red when the bullet goes through the back of their heads to take off the top half of their faces. 

There is comfort in this; there is comfort in knowing that he is useful. There is comfort in knowing that he can retreat to the depths of his mind and pull out the Winter Soldier, mass murderer and asset, a reliable and solid presence he can revert to. The Winter Soldier is a mask he can draw around his entire body and mind. The Winter Soldier doesn’t care about loss. Bucky Barnes does.

Later, when everybody in the building is dead and Bucky is making his way to Fury’s office, he peels the Soldier from his mind. Immediately fatigue creeps in. It’s not physical fatigue, but a bone-deep weary sort of fatigue that spiders around the edges of his vision and mind. He stops, breathing deeply, and cobbles together a new mask. 

Bucky doesn’t know why he exists off masks layer by layer. Every part of him is artificial, every part has had something removed or forcibly restrained. The original James Buchanan Barnes locked his desire for Steve Rogers into the bottom of tankards and absolute alleys. The Winter Soldier had _everything_ , every memory and extraneous sensation removed, and this Bucky— tries to prune away his memories once more. Bucky has always been wrestling with some part of himself. 

Inside, Fury is at his desk, regarding him with a dark eye. Bucky pauses before him. “Mission complete,” he says, and that’s about it. He puts visible effort into relaxing his body language.

“You just killed a hundred and twenty seven men,” Fury says. 

“I know.” Even when his body language is subdued it tastes like coiled danger. “Wasn't I meant to?“

“You were. But still, I’m tempted to check you into our psychiatry department.”

Bucky doesn’t want to go to any of SHIELD’s psychiatrists. Not now, not ever. His secrets are too visceral and too personal. “Did widow ever get put in there?”

Fury’s stare intensifies. “No. But that’s because they’re not qualified to help her. She’s trained _out_ of that.“

“Was,” Bucky corrects. “She was trained out of having psychiatrists understand her at all. You know she’s dead now.” 

A long pause. Bucky wants Fury to know that Bucky has accepted the loss of people close to him — or at least give the illusion of it. “Yes, she is, but for an honourable cause.”

Bucky imagines that Fury would say similarly for Steve’s disappearance. “So am I. After things like these, I’m more the Winter Soldier than Bucky Barnes. And he doesn’t like being prodded.”

Fury nods at that. He breaks their gaze finally, contemplating. 

“I just need a few days afterwards to get back into my head,” Bucky says. “Assuming you want me in my own head. There isn’t any Steve to pull me out anymore if I ever go too deep.” 

“We’ll make removing the last of HYDRA our first priority,” Fury says. “I’ll reserve you for the worst of the worst.”

Bucky nods curtly. “Fine by me. But I’d appreciate it if I still went out sometimes. It’s nice to know that I’m doing something good.”

There’s a quiet laugh from Fury. “There are a lot of ways you can do _good_ that’s not _killing_ on our behalf, Barnes. Donate to charities. Adopt a pet. Do volunteer work. We’re keeping you as a last resort. Find some sort of hobby for you to work your steam off with.”

Again, Bucky just nods. “Fine.”

They go over the details of the mission itself after that, and after Fury dismisses him, Bucky leaves the SHIELD building unsure how to feel. He’s showered and changed in the SHIELD facilities, pulled on the silicon cover for his arm too, so outwardly he looks like a normal person. He’s lied to Fury and provided a front for his mental state. He’s admitted out loud, again, that Steve is gone. 

That is what shakes him, he surmises. Admitting that Steve is gone. He’d admitted it for the first time after Steve stepped through the portal. He’d admitted it the second time when Sam Wilson had stopped in, and now he’s said it for a third. It doesn’t get easier. 

He takes the train back to Steve’s — now his — apartment in Red Hook. There’s a convenience store before the apartment that he stops into. They don’t seem to have cigarettes in the shelves so he asks at the counter. The cashier, a forty-something man chewing gum, asks what brand. Bucky says any. The dude shrugs and doesn’t bother asking for ID. 

As soon as Bucky’s outside he has one in his fingers and realises that he doesn’t have a lighter. He can start a fire with the arm, but that requires him out of public. It’s not that he has a craving and wants to light up as soon as possible; it’s the thought of smoking in Steve’s apartment that sits wrong with him and has him ducking into a back alley and peeling away the arm to flick a spark. Of course the arm can start fires. It has many uses, and arson apparently is also one of them. Holds the cigarette between his teeth as he rolls the silicone back on. Sure, the brand’s changed, but the smell brings him right back. 

—They don’t have a balcony, but they have a fire escape, and the fire escape is where Bucky goes to smoke. He sits with his legs dangling over the edge and a hand wrapped around the railing. The view is just the narrow street and the dirty buildings opposite, but his eyes trace patterns where there aren’t any, thinking about useless things. 

Thinking about his early shift tomorrow. Thinking about the war erupting in the papers. Thinking about rent. Thinking about the storm on the horizon. And just enjoying the curl of nicotine on his tongue and the breeze blowing. 

When he looks back through the window, the lady who’d followed him home is watching him from the mattress. Their clothes are piled on the floor but she ain’t blushing. She leans out the window and he gets himself a better view of the curve of her shoulders and the swell of her breasts. “Hey, doll,” he says. “Don’t wanna give everyone an eyeful, do ya?”

“No,” she says, reaching across to him and coaxing him closer. “But most men just lean out the window to smoke and I don’t need to leave the bed to kiss them.”

He takes the hint, holding the cigarette and kissing her instead. These women love it when he smokes. It makes him seem broody, dark, unattainable. Why do people long for unattainable things? 

“Sorry love,” he says, when they part. “The roommate’s got asthma. Can’t leave smoke in the apartment. You know how it goes.”

“You’re living with the guy, not me.” She disappears back into the room. A moment later, her voice floats out the open window, “Come back to bed?”

“Give me a second,” Bucky says, smoking, aflame, thinking about useless things—

—and he’s still smoking now, 2023, in the alley, breathing it out and just thinking of Steve. Stevie’s gone. He remembers that every day, every hour, with every accursed indrawn breath. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bIG WARNINGS! I updated the spoilers at the start for the more disturbing stuff that happens here

If Bucky forgets, who’s going to remember Steve? People will and still remember him as the hero and the golden boy, but no one remembers that little blond punk from Brooklyn who had a temper like a right bitch and tried to smoke and liked to fuck rough. Time’s erased him. Time’s eaten little Steven G. Rogers whole, replaced him with someone else, and only that impure longing from Bucky is keeping him existing in this reality. If Bucky forgets, Stevie will vanish.

Bucky can’t bear to forget, but he can’t keep remembering, either. It breaks him apart.

Memory is his curse. Steve would want him to be happy, but he doesn’t know how to be. 

*

Out on one of those smoking trips in the alleys, it starts to rain. Bucky curses and stubs out his cigarette and goes to flick it into the dumpster. 

Then he sees something small, useless and weak. Fury’s words echo in his head— _adopt a pet_ — as the tiny grey bundle swipes at his flicked cigarette. The kitten’s so small that it’d probably die if he accidentally stepped on it. It doesn’t invoke any sort of feeling in him. It’s just pitiful.

“You and me both,” Bucky mutters as he makes to pick it up. It hisses at his arm and skitters further back beneath its metal hiding place, so he goes to the nearest takeaway place and coaxes it out with a strip of chicken. The wind’s howling louder now, coming down with spitting rain. He can see that it’s shaking from the cold. He offers it his jacket and more food until he has a ball of fluff in his pocket and a wet plastic bag swinging with his dinner in a polystyrene box as he makes a break for his apartment. 

It darts off into the unknown as soon as he lets it down in the warmth of his apartment. Bucky shuts the door behind him, knowing that there isn’t place for it to escape. He keeps the windows and sliding door shut at all times. When he’s eating the somehow still-warm food at the table, the kitten comes slinking back. 

And so Bucky gains a pet. 

*

Bucky likes waking up to an empty mind. His eyes trace patterns on the ceiling, looking into the lightbulbs. Today’s still stormy. It’s been storming for the last week so the room’s dark even in the morning. 

It’s not the empty mind he likes, it’s the _ease_ of keeping it an empty mind. He gets up with no trouble, makes his bed with no trouble, changes his clothes with no trouble, waters the plants, feeds and waters the kitten, changes the litter box (he’s tried to train it the best he could, and it’s worked only somewhat), makes himself breakfast that is just milk and cereal. 

His umbrella keeps away the worst of the rain, but he still has to take off the sweater when he arrives at the gym and mindlessly runs on the treadmill and hits the other gear. A few hours later has him returning and taking a shower. When he gets out, drying his hair, it’s still raining and the cat’s asleep on the couch. Bucky can’t give himself respite. With nothing to do, he picks a random channel on the television and lets it run as background noise while he tries to find something to do. He tries his hand briefly at the art supplies lying around, but an ache starts at the back of his head and he’s rubbish at drawing anyway, so he abandons it quickly. 

All throughout, he’s thinking about nothing. It’s a good day. Except for the art thing, nothing’s come knocking on the doors of memory. His mind remains happily empty and he doesn’t have to spend a lot of effort to keep it that way. The whole time, he remembers it’s 2023 and he’s called Bucky. 

If art’s no good, maybe he can try music. He finds himself singing in the apartment softly. _Azzano, Azzano, pluck my sinews, pizzicato._ When he realises what’s coming out of his mouth, though, he stops. 

The television is on as white noise and he doesn’t even lament the use of electricity. He cleans instead, wiping down dust, doing the laundry, and somehow remains in his body the whole time. The kitten stumbles around after him and by the time evening has fallen, he’s actually quite hungry and the cat’s asleep on his bed. 

He leaves to the restaurant nearby. He doesn’t remember what he orders, which makes him slightly concerned, but he knows that he ends up at the bar nursing a drink that doesn’t affect him. 

The truth is— he likes the twenty-first century. He really does. He likes the way that things are a lot cleaner now and that there are fewer homeless people, he likes that there’s no war and you can instantly call or text someone who care about. It’s not perfect by a long shot, but it is better in so many aspects. The hours trickle along like liquid in a glass and Bucky reminisces in a good way. 

It’s the lady who ruins it all. 

The lady, black hair, dark eyes, who takes the seat opposite him and asks him if he’s looking for a good time. His own flirty reaction is knee-jerk, instinctive, and before he knows it, he’s citing the storm as the reason why they shouldn’t go to his apartment and he has her in his lap in a bathroom stall. 

Halfway through— the stall is surprisingly clean, flavourless, no patterns, there’s no one else inside so the sound of them echoes, breathy moans and the slap of skin against skin, her skirt hiked up and her bra pushed down, the pale column of her neck as she has it thrown back and he has his hands on her hips guiding her up and down— is when he loses the sense that he’s Bucky. He forgets what he’s doing. He can’t remember why he’s here. No, that’s not quite right. He knows why he’s here. He agreed to a quick fuck with a stranger. He just doesn’t know _why_ \- can’t believe this is happening– it’s absurd. Why is he doing this?

Her thighs clamp tightly around him and she stops moving as she comes, sweat trickling down to the divot of her collarbone. Bucky just watches it happen, eyes shocked and wide, and she finally clambers off him, unrolling the rubber and taking him into her mouth instead. She’s all business, wiping herself down with toilet paper in one hand while the other one works him. She has the attitude of someone who knows how to get someone else off and is aware of their own experience. Bucky knows she’s pulling all the tricks he’d usually like, paying particular focus to the underside of the head, twisting and providing wet friction, suckling and occasionally pushing him against her cheek so he can see it bulge, but it doesn’t do anything for him. 

To his horror, he can feel himself _flagging_. She must be able to sense it too because she speeds up, taking him down deep into her throat and fluttering around him there. Bucky feels like a jackass, and that gut-deep dread only quickens his demise. “Sweetheart,” he says, curling a hand around her neck and gently easing her off. “I think I’ve had a little too much to drink tonight.”

“You barely finished one,” she says, meaning she’d been watching him the whole night. That knife in his gut twists a little more. 

“Call it performance anxiety,” he says. 

There’s a tightness to her mouth that speaks of stubbornness, a professional sort of ego or morality that dictates that she tries her best to get him to come too. 

“It ain’t you. You’re a knockout, honey.”

“Right,” she says, flat, and is up in a second. Angry at herself. “Okay. Good luck, then. With the–“ hand wave “- _rain_.”

The stall door is pulled viciously shut and she’s gone. He hears her throwing away the condom, washing her hands, her footsteps and the bathroom door shutting. He leans back into the toilet seat. Doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but he feels the pressure in his head building again, pressing against the back of his eyes. He’s got his pants down at the knees and a half-hard dick. What the hell even is this? Is it the girl, or does he have fucking erectile dysfunction now? 

He thinks about her, black haired and full-mouthed and soft skinned. The thought of her is washed out with guilt and the rattiness of a restaurant bathroom. Then, blond hair. Blue eyes and the most wicked smile. Bucky squeezes his eyes closed and comes instantly.

God, what the fuck even is wrong with him. 

Walks home in the torrential rain loathing himself down to every cell, every bone. 

*

He’s supposed to connect with people; he knows that in a detached and objective sort of way. But it feels like an impossible task. So isolating. And it gets more and more difficult with every attempt. 

*

That night, Bucky dreams this:

The train is a dragon racing through the Alps, bellowing smoke and promises of destruction. Bucky ducks beneath the shot of his enemy and throws the shield out and it ricochets off the the wall in a shower of sparks. He rolls forwards, shooting wildly, catching the shield when it comes back and feeling the lurch when something erupts and there’s a _hole_ in the belly of their cage. Steve’s yanked out of it, tumbling and clawing at the ground and cursing and then he’s gone. 

Bucky drops everything and rushes to the edge of that gaping wound. No, Stevie, no– Stevie’s there, clinging to the side of the train, his expression wide with fear. 

There’s another lurch and shriek of metal. Screaming, Stevie falls. 

*

Bucky wakes up abruptly into a room that is very silent and still. He squeezes his eyes shut, the wispy hands of some terror of a dream still clinging to him. He doesn’t remember what he’d dreamed but he knows it was bad. Whatever it was, it wasn’t real. He lays there for awhile, feeling it, feeling the nameless horror drain away into surreality that he’s woken up this morning. Some part of him expects not to wake up, like that the hole in him will just swallow him one day and he’ll cease to exist. 

He opens his eyes again and stares into the cold and sallow atmosphere of the morning. It’s so quiet that he can pretend that there are no other lives moving in the world. The lightbulbs look back at him, dark, judging him for this fantasy.

If he didn’t have something to do he would stay in bed. Last night he vaguely remembers seeing another manila envelope on his dining table. There’s a new mission. So he rises, carefully and with a deliberate slowness. If he moves too quickly it’ll wake the thoughts in his head and stir memories in the room. It’ll disturb that dust. If he puts his focus into anything even as simple as moving, it’ll keep his thoughts from wandering. 

His bladder’s calling. He needs to take care of that. He steps into the bathroom, takes a leak, focuses on putting his feet one before the other. When he’s washing his hands he looks into the mirror—

Where’s the bucket? Of course Stevie’s left it in the kitchen. Little punk always forgets to put it back. Bucky fetches it and settles it into the sink as he washes his hands. It’s all to keep the water bill down. Wash your hands into the bucket, clean vegetables into the bucket— whatever, any time they’re using dirty water, use the bucket. Then pour the water in the bucket down the toilet to flush. 

They use a different bucket for hot water and baths. They’re so old and the habits are so ingrained that Bucky’s forgotten where the buckets came from in the first place. Did he actually buy them? He’s not sure, but even if he did, he wouldn’t be too upset, because they’re a darn good investment. 

—He hasn’t changed his clothes from last night. Oh. He’s still in his jeans and shirt and jacket looking like a mess. 

The faucet’s running. He turns it off because he doesn’t want to rack up the water bill. He and Stevie have a hard enough time– No, no, it’s 2023, and Stevie’s gone. 

Stevie’s-

The reality of it loosens all the air from his lungs and leaves him reeling. His throat constricts. His best friend. His- whatever Steve is to him. Whatever Steve is to him but he isn’t to Steve. Was. Whatever Steve _was_ to him. Glass is shattering around him; Bucky’s sunk a fist into the mirror because he’s lost control. Shame wells up in him, followed quickly by terror, and Bucky does what he’s been doing all this time: he runs. 

*

The time that Bucky had been snapped, had been dead, passed for him as no time at all. All this time, five years, compressed into a single instant and then Strange was telling him that they had to go fight and defeat this titan for good. There’d been so much happening: the death of Stark, the realisation that they’d been gone _five damn years_ , the news that Widow was gone (and Bucky had liked her, despite everything, fuck, they could relate to each other in this visceral way borne of shared experience), and _Steve_.

It’s that Steve now, that Steve who’d been trying to hold himself together for five years in a cracked world that holds Bucky like Bucky’s gonna crumble in his arms at any moment. Bucky clutches him right back, his heart beating warm and relieved in his chest. “Buck,” Steve says, brimming to the seams with relief. 

“I’m here, Stevie,” Bucky says, clutching him tighter. The scent of the burning battlefield is still acrid in his nostrils. He can hear shouted orders from Captain Marvel trying to lead cleanup. Thanos’ army is all gone, dissolved into dust. “I’m with ya. ’Til the end of line, isn’t that what we always say?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I know.” There’s something terribly sad in his eyes when he looks at Bucky. Bucky tells himself that’s because so many of the Avengers are dead, but in his gut he knows it’s not true. There’s something more. 

Half a week later, Bucky’s settling into his apartment. He’s just returned from a chat with Bruce, talking about Tony, about Natasha, about Vision, about Hulk, about everything he’s missed during his time dead. He doesn’t usually call them by their first names in his head — except for Steve and Sam — but he’s still in that mind space of being open after talking to Bruce. 

But the hard times are over. Things can only go upward from here. Bucky can get to know them by all their first names and get food and watch movies with them regularly. That’s where Steve finds him, standing at the window, thinking about how things have changed. He meets Steve with a smile. “Hey,” he says. 

Steve looks nervous though. He’s going to return the stones in an hour, so Bucky assumes it’s just performance anxiety talking before he has to make the trip. It can be nerve-wracking to have to do everything on your own. “Buck,” Steve says, soft-like. Bucky’s heart, paradoxically, melts and tenses all at once. “You know you mean the world to me, right?”

Where’s this coming from? Steve wouldn’t be acting like this unless he was about to break bad news to him. “‘Course,” Bucky says, tilting his head quizzically. “What’s eatin’ ya?”

“Nothing,” Steve says. He’s a terrible liar, but the mushy expression he’s wearing right now makes Bucky reluctant to grill him. “Just wanted to say it. You were gone for five years, and these last few days have been— busy. I didn’t get to see you that much.”

C’mon, Stevie. Just tell me. “Don’t sweat it. You know we got all the time in the world to see each other after this.”

He looks back, because Steve hasn’t answered. Steve’s preoccupied with turning his compass over in his hand — the one with a picture of Peggy, the one that he’s always looking at when he thinks no one else is looking. A tight feeling starts in Bucky’s chest.

“She’d be happy for you,” Bucky says. It’s a time of loss. Naturally, Steve’s thinking about Peggy.

“I know,” Steve replies. 

He doesn’t wanna push so he doesn’t say much else after that, and Steve seems content to remain quiet. Steve helps him set up the curtains and fit the headboard and put the dishes into the shelves and they bask in each other’s familiar presences before it’s time for Steve to go. He has to run through the final plans with Bruce. Bucky wonders why Steve’s pushing it so late, it’s not normal for him to be late to anything, and that tightness in his chest intensifies. He ends up having to shoo him out. “You don’t want to keep Bruce waiting,” he scolds.

“Hey,” Steve says, just as he’s leaving. His face tells Bucky everything he needs to know. He looks so incredibly _sad_. “I’m leaving my shield at Sam’s, just in case something goes wrong, alright?”

Bucky’s throat closes, everything becoming clear, wanting to say something, wanting to talk Steve out of it, but he thinks about Peggy; he thinks about how Steve looks at that picture. His heart breaks and he lets Steve leave. He lets Steve fucking leave. 

The next time they talk, Steve’s two steps away from the platform that takes him away forever.

“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back,” Steve says.

“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you,” Bucky whispers, and hides everything. 

*

He doesn’t want to see the faces of the Avengers if they ever find out— Bucky Barnes lied his ass off. What sordid mind would’ve imagined that Steve didn’t even tell Bucky that he wasn’t coming back? Because it’s true. Steve _didn’t_ say anything. He didn’t need to, but it hurts so much just the same. Steve didn’t say it out loud. Steve wouldn’t admit it. Steve chose not to tell Bucky that he was planning to leave forever. He chose not to say that he was leaving so he could go back to Peggy. Bucky didn’t deserve that degree of honesty. Steve must’ve known that Bucky couldn’t hold up in the face of that terrible truth.

Steve didn’t even say that Sam would make a good Captain America. Yeah, Bucky lied about that too. 

*

It’s 2023. Bucky’s running somewhere through the streets of New York. Faces flash past him, but he runs until his lungs burn and keeps running. People are smiling and happy and he’s so damn _pathetic_ that everything he looks at just reminds him of Stevie and it’s like a thousand wounds explode over his body at once. 

He can’t live like this, but he can’t die because he knows that’d be dishonour on Steve’s memory. Instead he’s this moving corpse, this person who’s empty inside. How the fuck is he expected to carry on when the best thing in his life is gone? That’s it, Bucky, run. Repress. Forget. 

But the memories — the worst ones — rise from the very deepest depths, teeth outstretched. 

He remembers the train. He remembers vividly. He remembers the bright flash of light whenever his opponent fired his gun. He remembers Steve sliding open the compartment door. He remembers bracing his legs against the swaying of the train and the bite of the metal shelf against his back. He remembers his hands shaking but determined around the cold barrel of his weapon. 

He remembers the first time it happened: Steve bursting into his tent late, panting, apologising because he was so sorry Bucky, I’m so sorry, I was debriefing with Agent Carter and I forgot- we were supposed to have dinner together, Bucky, do you think you could do tomorrow instead? He remembers it happening so many times after — at first it was just Agent Carter, then it was some other Agent, then it was some Commander, and it was all these important people who now wanted Steve’s attention — that Bucky stopped asking to eat together entirely. Steve didn’t even notice because he never offered to start it up again. 

*

Some days his toes are wet and cold and feeling like they’re about to fall off, and he’s coughing but trying not to show it because there’s a plague going around the trenches. Bucky’s got his firearm on his back and wiping his mouth and trying to clear his ears from the ringing because John, the guy he was talking to a minute ago, just had his head cut open by shrapnel from a grenade that landed too close. There’s dirt in his eyes from the spray that was kicked up that he blinks away furiously. 

He runs straight into Steve — Steve with his shield up and a determined set to his jaw and an equal amount of dirt all over him. He grabs Bucky’s shoulders, patting him down for injuries, and Bucky shakes his head and goes, “I’m ‘aight, pal.” 

“I’m gonna go clear out the trench ahead of us,” Steve tells him. They both tense as there’s a shriek through the air and a mortar lands somewhere close by. He can hear the spray of mud and shouting and gunfire. 

“Don’t be crazy,” Bucky hisses. Super-soldier or not, Steve isn’t gonna survive hundreds of rounds sunk into his body. 

“I have to,” Steve says. He grabs Bucky’s hands. Bucky’s heart is thundering in his throat. Why had he ever wanted to die in the war? He just wants to go back to his apartment, but it wasn’t nice then either. It was just as damp and dingy and painful and all about wondering if Stevie would die that day too. “If I don’t get back— don’t tell Peggy that I was planning to propose to her, okay?”

His breath goes out of him. He nods shallowly and then Steve’s yelling for covering fire and vaulting out of the trench, and Bucky’s running to get to his gunner’s place and pulling his weapon into his hands. 

Bucky shoots so many men that day and doesn’t even pause to think about the wives that he’s just widowed. Thinks about Stevie dying. Thinks about Stevie marrying Peggy. Lose-lose, Barnes. Blood in his mouth. 

*

It’s 2023. Bucky’s running down the stairs to some underground in New York. People ignore him and he ignores them too, but he calms and breathes when he reaches the turnstiles and is surprised when he still has a card that has cash on it and can enter through. But walking and pretending to be a normal human gets him feeling unnerved, like the skeleton in his head is trying to peel out. He pretends some more, riding on trains until the end of their lines and looking at all these people who don’t see him. 

He remembers the icy cold blast of wind when the side of the train tore open and the snow came in with the cold and the noise. It was so _loud_ that he saw rather than heard Steve’s lips shape the word ‘ _Buck_ ’. There was the rattle of the wheels and the carriages and the howl of the whistle and the snow and the wind and Bucky was being dragged across the floor like there was an enormous hook through the back of his neck and pulling him out. 

He remembers being carried out of Azzano. Azzano, where Bucky was given a taster of hell. He remembers being with Steve after that unbearable pain. He remembers feeling broken and clinging to Steve’s big body and thinking _he’ll never need me to fight off his bullies again_.

He remembers looking up at Steve’s desperate face as he clung to the hull of the train and seeing that unreachable distance stretch between them. Since the early days, Steve was only getting further and further away from him, that back vanishing into the mist, and it was so painful, somehow more painful than the frostbite chill that cut through his skin. 

Some days Bucky is sure he could’ve held on for longer. He let go of the train on his own volition.

Some days Bucky is sure he couldn’t have held on for any longer. He clung to the train for as long as he could’ve. 

He doesn’t remember which one is the real one. It all gets mixed up in his head. He hates being so confused all the time. He wishes he could just forget and yet he wishes he could remember which one he chose, but he doesn’t know how to remember. 

The tunnels fill with a great huge roar. Bucky steps forwards to greet it, to step closer to the edge of the hole in the carriage and look at where he’s hanging to the outside to get it clear for once and for all what he really picked. 

That station wasn’t its stop. 2023, the bullet train in the NY subway hits him going over a hundred miles per hour. The human parts of Bucky erupt like a body bag.

*

He wakes in the back of an ambulance, in the light, sirens, and immediately begins pulling IVs and needles and tubes out of his body. It must be a single paramedic because there’s no one in the back with him. Everything is tender and knitting together with the serum. His head’s fuzzy, but he knows that he has to get out of the vehicle. Through the windows of the back doors he can see the road disappearing behind them. He can’t stay here, and with his metal arm he wrenches it open and doesn’t jump so much as fall out. 

As soon as he’s breathing the cool night air he feels better. How long as he been in out for? Not long, clearly. Does SHIELD know? He doesn’t even know where he is. He thinks he rode a few trains but he’s not sure. He clutches at his head. He stepped in front of a train, he thinks. How long has it been? Couldn’t have been long. He needs to get back. 

Maybe getting hit displaced his brain, because he finds himself wandering aimlessly around the streets in his blood-soaked clothes, just staring at the streetlamp lights or looking at the buildings and distant sounds of cars on the roads or people chattering and cheering. He needs to get home but Bucky Barnes is useless right now. 

What he needs is the Winter Soldier. Leaning against a wall coated in graffiti, he breathes hard and searches for that cold heart in him. _Come_ , he coaxes. _I need you_. The steadiness of the Winter Soldier drifts in like a snow storm. His hands steady. Find the subway. Check the maps there. Look for roadsigns. The subway might be closed off because he’d caused an accident. But the trains working the other direction should still be fine. 

That steel resolve doesn’t last for long, because Bucky is struck by sudden light-headedness and he collapses by an alley wall. He’s panting, sweating all over, feverish. Everything gives out.

*

They changed the Captain America exhibit in the Smithsonian. They’ve compacted Steve Roger’s early life to make way for his role in ‘The Infinity War’. He helped console people through their grief, Bucky reads. He made peace with his differences with Stark. He fought tooth and nail and became so damn worthy of goodness that even the hammer of gods heeded his calls. 

And Steve Rogers went back, the final passage says, beside a picture of Peggy Carter. Now that his duty was done, he went back in time to that lady he loved and gave her that dance that he promised her so long ago. The end. Now we’ve got a new Captain America to herald a new age.

There’s no mention of Bucky at all in the new sections. Nowadays, most people don’t mention him. People talk about Captain America and forget about his best friend. The best friend isn’t important. The lover is, but the best friend isn’t. It’s in the formula for the stories that sell well and the stories that are remembered. 

“Excuse me,” someone behind him says. “Are you okay? Sir, you’re crying.”

“‘M sorry,” Bucky says, over and over, wiping at his face. He hadn’t realised. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing.”

He hopes Stevie is happy, because Bucky sure as hell isn’t. 

*

Natasha Romanov was one of the only Avengers that’d forced their way into his life. He remembers the days of the Red Room and training her, vaguely, but they’re not like that anymore. Neither of them are like that anymore, but there’s a solidarity to the two of them. They’re proof that even changed people with changed lives can know each other. 

Bucky’s up on a rooftop, rifle lying beside him, watching New York wake up. He watches the little people move and walk and start to get up for work. There’s a blue stillness to the morning, caught in the dawn moment before the streetlights turn off but before the sun rises. He knows she’s there and she knows he knows. 

“Sometimes it’s scary to admit certain things to yourself,” she says. Her voice is always as husky and gravel-ridden as he remembers. 

“Admit what? That this city’s outgrown me? Time moves too fast for this old man,” he says, sliding a thumb up the barrel of his rifle. 

“That’s not true,” she says. She comes to sit next to him, her customary slow slide of grace. “Yesterday you were watching movies with us and you cried during Grave of the Fireflies.”

Motherfucker. “Nobody _wasn’t_ crying, Natasha.”

“I know,” she says, more softly. The city makes her whole face glow. She looks more sombre than he’d like. “That’s what I mean. You’re with us now. The world _hasn’t_ outpaced you. You’re right here.“

He looks away. 

“Then what’s the scary thing?”

“Steve,” she says simply. Bucky goes very still. “He’s found his place and you’re finding yours. Just because you two aren’t on your own anymore doesn’t mean it’s for the _worse_.”

He gets to his feet, starts packing up everything. “We’re not having the conversation.” 

Her eyes go hard immediately. She stands as well, the light from the streets below blacking her shadow to cast that venomous spider. She grabs his shoulder as she passes and her grip is firm. “When Steve screams at night, it’s always your name,” she says, words like the skim of needles, and vanishes.

*

Bucky wakes up somewhere in the outskirts of New York feeling like hell has bludgeoned him several times over. What’s the year? He touches his head gingerly. 2023. Alright. He has no clue how much time has passed, but his clothes are a dried disaster. He peels his shirt away but keeps the rest on for modesty. 

There’s a nearby gas station that he ducks into, blinking in the fluorescent light. Bright colours are everywhere. He heads straight for the restroom and a tension he didn’t know had knotted up his shoulders releases a little once he’s inside. He washes out his clothes in the sink. Wet the clothes. Squeeze out hand soap, scrub, wring, rinse and repeat. The face that stares back from the mirror is almost familiar in how feral and fucked up it looks. 

There’s a dirty shower stall that he steps into, face scrunching up at the mould on the walls but it’s not like any disease will stick to him, and gives himself a cursory wash down. He’s completely naked in this public bathroom, drying his shirt under the hand dryer. When that’s done he wipes himself dry with paper towels. His hair’s still wet so he puts his head beneath the hand dryer as well. Starts laughing a little about that, thinking how absurd it looks, and the laughter turns into choked-off sobs when he thinks about how he’d tell Steve about it. 

When he’s in relatively clean socks, his shirt, drying his underwear and trousers, the door swings open. Bucky doesn’t turn around, doesn’t care. He’s not wearing any pants, bare-assed, if the person’s got a problem they can kick him out, whatever, he’s mostly done. What he doesn’t expect is the feeling of a hungry gaze roaming down his back. He turns around — it’s just some random guy, watching him, blond, muscular for a trucker, some stubble, tall — Bucky’s instinctive reaction is to bristle and ask _what are you lookin’ at_ but it’s 2023, there’s nothing wrong with being a queer now. It’s none of Bucky’s business what people do anyway. 

Besides, Bucky’s _not_ a queer. He’s not one of those. Never looked at men sideways — _he did, he did, he remembers it, but he’d never done anything, he tamps it down_ — it was only ever Stevie, and it wasn’t like that with Stevie. Not really. He just really liked Stevie as a friend and sometimes that line blurred a bit, but it wasn’t like that. He keeps that mantra up when he hears the guy getting closer, when he feels the guy touch him — Bucky jerks his left shoulder away. “No touching the arms,” he says harshly, but spreads his legs further apart anyway. The guy has some sort of slick that he opens from a packet and is pressing into Bucky, pressing his cock straight in, and it feels better than Bucky’s last romp in a bathroom. 

He’s gotta stop making a habit out of this, he thinks to himself hysterically, bracing himself against a bathroom wall while a total stranger opens him wide on his cock. Feeling his own half-hard prick flopping about, feeling that alien sensation of being penetrated again and again, it does actually feel better after a while, but before he can get a hand on his dick, the guy comes into Bucky. 

The dude hauls him in front of the mirror but Bucky doesn’t look as thick fingers push themselves into his ass and he jerks himself off. By the time he’s come and opened his eyes again, the guy’s definitely taken the hint, because he’s backed away into one of the bathroom stalls to properly take a piss. 

Bucky’s a disaster. Maybe he _is_ a queer. Maybe he _does_ think about Stevie then it comes to sex. What does it matter if he admits it now in his head anyway? For fuck’s sake. 

*

He does manage to get back to his apartment after that. He closes the door behind him and there’s a terrible _crunch_ and a scream.

Steve’s door in Brooklyn Heights is heavily reinforced. Bucky suspects SHIELD did it when he first moved in, because it’s heavy, steel laid inside to stop people kicking it down and bullets coming through. There’s less than an inch’s worth of space between it and the floor and it doesn’t stop for anything. It’d destroy any toes that get in the way, and in this case it’s not a toe. It’s a _kitten_. His kitten had darted out of the door behind him and he hadn’t realised. 

Bucky can’t look at what’s on the doorframe. He runs to the sink, throws up and throws up and can’t stop throwing up. 

He has to clean it up eventually. The door had caught his kitten right at the head, and the head’s barely attached to its neck anymore. It must’ve died instantly but that’s not a relief. He lays its body gently in the dumpster where he found it and curses himself. He brings his metal fingers to head and curses himself. 

All the people he’s killed — of course they’d have had pets that’ve gone on to die from neglect. One kitten in the face of all these lives is nothing. But that was the Winter Soldier who murdered. Not Bucky Barnes. _Bucky Barnes_ did this, and Bucky Barnes can’t live with it. 

The manila folder on the table is still there. The one that’d been left on the table before this entire mess. 

Bucky can get the Winter Soldier back into his head. He will. 

*

HYDRA wanted to create something more machine than man and more soulless than human. They wanted to create a monster.

They needn’t have. Bucky already was one, and he never fails to deliver. 

*

The mission this time involves HYDRA. Fury’s written _highly dangerous, contact when ready_ at the bottom. The burner phone is in the file too, definitely traced, so Fury must know that Bucky’s on his way — alone — to the HYDRA base right now. The road washes away beneath him, bland and featureless. The base is in Pennsylvania, beneath the city of Philadelphia. It won’t be a long drive. Mission’s dangerous because they can bomb the entire city, Fury’d written. They’re planning to.

Bucky doesn’t care. He taps a rhythm on the steering wheel to occupy his mind with white noise. He turns on the radio. It’s advertising medication for hallucinations. 

The thing is, before the serum, Steve had been different. Steve _had_ been that punk. He’d disliked rules, he’d picked fights, he’d argued and cussed and blew up. After the serum, he’d been _self-conscious_ of his strength. He followed rules because he was meant to. He was Captain America now. He didn’t pick recklessly anymore because everyone was watching him and because he’d always win them. He didn’t let his temper erupt anymore because it scared people. He wore that mask for so long that it etched into his face. Stevie had changed, Bucky thought to himself, and he’d always had mixed feelings about it. He was glad that Stevie was stronger physically, but he missed the unpredictability of his youth. 

The real sourness was from the fact that once Stevie became Captain America, the distance between him and Bucky grew. It was natural, expected, inevitable. The problem was just that Bucky was too selfish to let go. He’s still too selfish and too weak to let go now. Steve fills his dreams and haunts his waking hours, and Stevie had walked away.

Steve walked away. 

He thinks that thought, and breathes out. 

The radio says, _Winter Soldier_ , and he jerks the car, sudden, shocked. _We know you are coming. Hand yourself over and we will not harm the city._

There’s no way to answer, so Bucky just keeps driving. The radio spits his trigger phrases at him, but his time in Wakanda wiped those from his mind. He keeps driving until he pulls up at a parking lot near the edge of the city. The lot is overlooked by a giant mural of colour and faces and letters, and he stops momentarily to look at it just before he cuts the ignition and opens the trunk.

Hydra is easy to find. One of the many high-rises in the city takes its elevator downwards and by the time the doors are opening, there are HYDRA agents waiting for him down the entire corridor. Bucky’s got his sniper on his back and he peels off his silicone wrap as he goes. The gleam of his metal arm flexes menacingly beneath the light. 

“Welcome home, Soldier,” one of the agents says. They’re all dressed the same. This one has wary eyes. A door slides open behind him. It’s a _chair_ , wired up, not entirely familiar because they must’ve made adjustments to it over the years. Bucky’s knees nearly go loose. 

“I need your guarantee that you’re not going to bomb the city,” he rasps. He’s just walked into HYDRA’s open waiting arms. 

“If you’re here and willing to be an asset, we wouldn’t,” the operative says. They usher him in. 

It’s Bucky Barnes who sits down on the chair and shuts his eyes. Taking his mind away sounds like the best thing in the world, but he _knows_ that they won’t be able to erase it from him. There’s no way they can erase Stevie from his mind. God knows he’s been trying so hard these last few months. No amount of repression can take away that ache in his chest nor the memories in his head. Nothing. 

The greatest part of him knows that he’s in control and that the wipe won’t work. But some small part of him, furtively, doesn’t mind if it does. Win-win, Barnes. 

*

The pain is beyond description. Bucky wakes up screaming on a metal table. Zola? Zola? It’s dark, just like it was in Azzano, and he smells the sting of arsenic. He’s strapped down with tight bands. There are people surrounding him. HYDRA? His vision’s not clear. He hears them talking about his blood rate and how it didn’t work. They sound worried. Bucky rips off the band holding down his left arm and seizes the nearest one by the neck. Someone starts shouting, and he crushes the windpipe of the man in his hands. Then he’s ripping away the rest of his restraints, but as soon as he stands something crashes into him and sends him to the floor. There’s an enormous man above him, hitting him again and again, and Bucky’s so _angry_. He doesn’t know where the anger comes from. Try to erase Stevie from his mind, the fuckin’ idiots, it’s impossible, don’t you know? 

The huge guy above him is strong but Bucky is faster. He slips out from the man’s brutal fists but something else wraps around him, a net, pinning his arm against the wall. Something else is shot into him that immediately makes him feel sluggish. A tranquilliser. Someone’s moving towards him and their movements are oddly familiar. They get to close— _stupid_ , and Bucky rips out the wall, the net still stuck to him, and grabs the person and snaps their neck. 

_”What are you doing?!”_ someone’s screaming. Bucky recognises that voice. It’s Sam. Sam Wilson. Bucky’s got Peter Parker’s head in his hands, neck snapped like a helpless little kitten, and he– Hulk is there, furious, but he spots the other body by the table. Is that Pepper Potts? Red, red like the blood everywhere. 

Oh, Bucky was so wrong. 

*

Bucky wakes up screaming on a metal table. Zola? It’s dark– but his eyes adjust quickly. “Oh god,” he’s gasping. “Oh, god.” How is he still alive? He killed the kid and he killed Mrs Stark. Mrs Potts. He killed two people. He needs to be put down. Oh, god. 

He looks over. In the darkness, there’s a shape. “Hey,” a familiar voice says. 

“Parker?” Bucky rasps, shaking. “Potts?”

“What about them?” Sam asks. 

“Didn’t I kill them?” he says. He remembers it so vividly, the quick snap of bone. No one would’ve survived that. 

“No, you didn’t,” he says. “I know HYDRA got you real bad and we thought we lost you on the chair, but you never got out of your restraints at all.” 

The way he says _never_ makes the hairs on Bucky’s neck stand. “How long have I been out?“ Bucky croaks. 

“Six years,” Sam says. It’s like a physical punch. Bucky falls back, limp. Six whole years. That’s how long World War two lasted. “You’ve been in a coma for six years. We got you out from Philadelphia in a week, but- you were stuck in your head for a long time.”

“HYDRA’s gone?” he says.

“Yeah. We wiped them off the face of the earth. There aren’t any chairs anymore.” Sam squeezes his arm. It’s grounding. 

“Fuck,” Bucky weeps. “Fuck.”

“One more thing,” Sam says. “Steve came back.”

“What?” That’s impossible. “Where is he?” He’s losing all air. Steve came back? Stevie? No, that’s not possible. 

“Not far from here. I can give you coordinates.”

Why isn’t Steve here to see him? “Where’s everyone else?” Bucky says. 

“They’re around the world right now. Bruce is in Africa, Thor’s still with the guardians, Pepper’s giving a lecture at MIT, Strange is in his usual place, Peter’s finishing college, Nat’s in Asia, Clint’s with his family, and I think Wanda’s in Europe, I’ve told them that you’ve woken up, but I think— well, you might wanna see Steve first.”

Something’s wrong, something creeps just at the edge of his consciousness, but Bucky pushes the thought aside for later. He wants to see Steve. He does. He does. 

*

The coordinates lead him to the seaside. They’re somewhere where Bucky swears is familiar but he can’t quite place, and he hadn’t been paying attention to the road nor his surroundings when he’d been going. All he knows now is that he’s making his way through a trail through the dunes, passing a sign that says ‘Private Property’, wondering if he’s at the right place. He’s triple-checked the co-ordinates with Sam, though, so he powers forwards. 

The sea is a colossal thing. He hasn’t realised how long it’s been since he’s seen the sea, but it’s there huge and blue and uncaring. He staggers forwards. There’s a cottage up ahead where the coordinates lead. A cottage by the sea. It comes into focus the closer he gets. Fairly small, stone brick, white for the doorway and windowsills, a chimney. Gravel crunches when he gets closer and up to the driveway. There’s a potted plant by the front door. It’s not flowering but it’s been trimmed. The whole place is surrounded by flowers. Stevie must be keeping good care of everything. He knocks and holds his breath. 

That wait is the longest wait of his life. He doesn’t know what Steve’s gonna think. Did Steve give up on him? Why did Steve come back? He has so many questions and they go instantly blank when the door opens. Steve Rogers looks back at him, eyes crinkled into a smile. His face is crinkled all over. “Hello?” he says, teetering back to make space for Bucky. His walking cane clacks against the timber as it does. 

Bucky is speechless. Completely speechless. “Hi, Steve,” he whispers. 

“Say that again?” Steve Rogers, at least ninety, asks. “I’m afraid my hearing’s not so good.”

“Hi, Steve,” Bucky repeats, still rooted to the spot. 

“Hello to you too.” He smiles. It’s such a familiar smile that it makes Bucky tremble. But it’s _all wrong_. “I suppose you know me, but I’m so sorry. This old head just doesn’t remember people so well anymore.” Steve starts to clack back into the house. “Now, young man, do you want to come in for a cup of tea or anything? I get a lot of visitors so I’m well-prepared.”

Bucky swallows. “It’s okay,” he says. 

Steve looks back at him and squints. “Ah!” Bucky’s stomach soars and plummets all at once. “I know you. You’re Tony Stark, aren’t you? He was a good man. A good man.”

“Goodbye, Steve,” Bucky says, and shuts the door. 

Then he’s running down to the beach, leaving indents in the sand, kicking it up after him, running away from this terrible vision that’s come upon him. He hears the frail call of Steve from behind him, but he keeps running, trying to deny. It can’t be, it can’t be. He can’t _breathe_. 

Bucky crashes into the surf, inhaling water, trying to wade deeper. Wash this all away. What is this curse? God, how? He goes deeper and deeper, gasping. His eyes sting from the tears and then the salt water. His throat burns. It can’t be true. It can’t be true. Unconsciousness snaps his mind between brutal steel jaws. 

*

Bucky wakes up screaming on a metal table. Zola? It’s not. He’s woken up here for the third time. What’s happened? Did Sam fish him out of the ocean after his dead bloated body floated to shore? Just let him rest, for all that’s holy and all that’s cursed, just _let him rest_! Bucky’s been running again, running for what feels like forever. He _can’t_ , not any more. He gasps for air like he can’t breathe, still feeling salt water in his lungs.

“Hey, Bucky,” Natasha Romanov says at his bedside. 

It hits him suddenly, abruptly, with all the impact of a freight train. The thing that’d been nagging him. The reason why everything still felt the same after six goddamn years. Sam said _Nat’s in Asia_ but that’s not possible because Natasha’s _dead_. This is all in his head— none of this is real — he’s just going insane. He’s finally hit the brink. He’s lost. 

“You’re not real,” Bucky says, and rips himself out of his constraints in an explosion of steel. He grabs her and there’s no fear in her eyes. “You’re _dead_! Get out of my head! Get _OUT_! LET ME GO!”

Her face morphs into Steve’s just as he tears her head off.

*

Bucky wakes up screaming on a metal table. 

Immediately there’s a scramble of motion around him. “He’s awake!” he hears Sam yell. “Do we need more tranqs?”

“No!” Bucky’s screaming. “ _No_!”

“His body can’t take much more.” Banner’s words come out in a rush. “HYDRA already pumped him up with so much that we can’t risk adding any more unknown agents.”

“Stevie!” Bucky screams, but it trails off into a sob. “ _Stevie_.” 

He feels the room get quiet around him. He opens his eyes and only sees the ceiling. They’re all watching him, he can feel it, but they’re not real, so he can say whatever he likes. 

“Where’s Stevie?” he asks, and feels like he’s twelve again. 

“He went to the past,” someone says gently. He thinks it’s Mrs Stark. 

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut. “I want to sit up. Please.”

Bruce Banner unlatches the restrains and stands close, just in case Bucky lashes out. He doesn’t. He feels hollow after killing his friends — even if it’s only in his mind. He just sits up and rubs at his wrists. 

He clears his throat. “Steve went back,” he says. He feels like he needs to say it aloud. To confirm that it’s real, and not the horror by the beachside. “He went back to the past and didn’t tell me and _I let him go_.”

The emotion hits, just like it always does when he admits it. 

There are a lot of them here. Peter Parker is peeking around the around a distraught-looking Pepper Potts. Sam is standing beside an array of monitors. Clint is near the back of the room with the Scarlet Witch. Thor and the Guardians that he’d met briefly are standing near Clint. Even Stephen Strange is close by, magic swirling around his hands and around Bucky’s body.

His face’s all wet, and he swipes at it angrily because it’s making his vision all blurry. It’s making everything unfocused and making his voice come out hitching in his throat. “I let him go back to her for _love_. Out of _love!_ ” he snarls. Out of his love for him, out of his love for her, god, it was all the fucking same, and he hadn’t said anything.

Pepper starts to usher some of the the Guardians out, taking Spiderman and Dr. Strange out, saying something quietly to them, and Bucky can see Sam’s wide eyes. 

“I let him go,” Bucky’s saying, babbling, because now that he’s opened his mouth he can’t stop. “I let him go, but I was the one who took care of him, I was the one who taped the windows shut because they were broken and the cold air kept getting in around the edges at nighttime and it made his asthma worse-” 

Shaking, can’t meet their eyes so he looks at his hands but the words can’t stop bleeding from him, just trying to make them see, make anybody see— make someone _understand_ because he’s sick of running from this knowledge, he’s sick of it choking him down and squeezing the life outta him. 

“I bandaged him up every time some fucker broke him apart, I wiped the blood off his face when he split his nose for the first time, I bought him pencils to draw with and _I_ fought all his demons-

“- _I_ took him in when he ma died, _I_ took him in when he was tremblin’ from adrenaline and concussion and I went to hell and back for him every single time even before his smile got so big and wide, I did it all for him before anyone else even knew his name— don’t you understand — _it was me!_ ”

He’s basically begging them to listen, fucking hell, it’s so pathetic, he’s practically grovelling, fuck, “And _I let him go!_ ” he yells, “How couldn’t I? She’s his _beloved_ and I know damn well what that means, means you gotta get to them, gotta be with them, no matter what happens, no matter what changes— I know what that means because he’s _mine_!”

His breath leaves him all of a sudden. He’s said it. Oh, god. He’s said it. He’s never admitted it. Not even in his head. In all these months he’s never dared to think of the word _love_. All the tautness goes out his body. All his structure, splintered. 

“Without him,” he says, heavy. Strange to hear himself say that out loud. Steve Rogers, his beloved. A sob threatens to well up in his chest. “Without him. Without love there’s nothing. No way to end, no livin’.”

“Bucky,” someone says, not unkindly, and somehow that’s what tips him over the edge. He snaps to alertness, the tension back, something’s ripping him open from inside, launches himself towards them–

“He might as well be fucking dead to me! He didn’t give himself for the soul stone like Natasha or give everything to snap like Stark!” Bruce is holding him back, Bucky’s breaking apart, starting to cry even as he’s shouting, “he left _me_ and he didn’t leave me for the world, he left me for _love_ of someone else and I’ll never see his smile again and I’ll never hear him say _Buck_!

“I sutured all his cuts, don’t you fucking see!” he sobs hysterically, “I washed his _hair_! I took him on double dates just to get people love him like I did and now _they do_ and he’s _gone_ –“

It’s nothing from there. 

Crumples to the floor, thinking about Stevie’s laugh. 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky doesn’t wake up screaming on a metal table again. He realises, after, with slow horror, that it was _real_. He’d just splayed his guts out for them all to hear. 

But it’s a relief, somehow. It’s overwhelming. It’s a relief. 

 

 

 

 

 

After Steve returns all the stones, he lands himself in the exact moment in time when the Steve of that timeline fell into the ice. Peggy’s got her hand over her mouth, tears running down her cheeks, when he knocks on the door. She doesn’t even ask how. Steve just extends his hand and says, ”I think you owe me a dance.”

And they dance — in Peggy’s living room, music swirling around his ears. It’s the happiest he thinks he’s ever been. She feels right in his arms, and the hollow in his chest he’d been living with all throughout the twenty-first century eases. She’s as beautiful as she always was. 

When the song ends, he kisses her, and she asks, “Are you a ghost, Captain?”

“Steve, please,” he says. “And no. I’m here. I’ll explain it all tonight.”

“Alright,” she says. Suddenly he feels bad about her degree of trust, but he quickly buries that feeling and kisses her again.

*

He finds Bucky before Hydra does. He’s at the bottom of the ravine, frozen half to death. They’d left him there for so long that it stuns Steve. He hadn’t realised it’d taken so long for anyone to find him. Bucky’s colder than death. Steve’s heart clenches tightly enough that he fears it’ll stop beating. He clutches Bucky tightly to him and curses himself for not rescuing Bucky first. 

“Stevie?” Bucky says. His breath frosts in the air. There’s snow in his hair, snow on his eyelashes. His arm’s an empty and dead hole. 

“Hey, Buck,” he says, and something bursts in his chest. He sobs into Bucky’s hair. He can’t believe it. Bucky’s not gonna have to go through all that HYDRA did to him. He’s not going to have to get tortured and kill all those people. Bucky can live happy. “I’m takin’ you home. You’re coming home.”

“‘Kay,” Bucky mumbles into his big lug of a shoulder. 

*

Steve has only really worked with Peggy and her collected demeanour has always been a charm, but he hadn’t realised how much it carries over into her private life. He tells her over dinner of an abridged version of his future. It’s too surreal. Aliens, he says, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. Galaxies and titans. Gods. She stops him partway through.

“I noticed you weren’t…” she pauses, masking it as concentration as she cuts a small square of bread for herself, “the Steve that I knew. When you’re not smiling, you seem very haunted.”

He wonders if she was going to say _my Steve_. “A lot of good people died. It always sticks with you,” Steve says. “And the five years— that was such a weight. Sometimes I still can’t believe that it’s not like that anymore.”

“Who died? Did I?”

“Yes,” Steve says but doesn’t want to go into detail about it. After a pause he says, “Bucky killed Stark, and just a week ago Stark’s son also died.”

“That does sound very complicated,” she says, calm as ever. “You’ll have to tell me all about it.”

*

Steve has the watch and the cylinder of Pym particles in the top drawer of Peggy’s desk. He’s told her what it was, of course, but he doesn’t intend to use it.

*

Peggy is a saint and then some. She’s always open to listening whenever Steve wants to talk about his past and his the future. She’s working at her desk that night when she says, “Do you want to return to the war?”

Steve had come back as a form of retirement, of getting rest after all that he’d done. He’s been fighting for so long and it’s been wearing him down with all these years. But the thought of all these good people still dying and still fighting without him doesn’t sit right. He imagines briefly if he said no. Would he stay in Peggy’s home like a gilded cage, a golden bird, a hidden dirty secret? It reminds him of his early days when he was still a tiny brat and he hadn’t been enlisted while Bucky had. That sense of hopelessness had been suffocating, not knowing if his best friend was still alive. 

Bucky can’t still be fighting now, he realises. Not one-armed. Where _is_ Bucky? Steve had dropped him off at the hospital and vanished without another word, so he’s certainly still recovering, but what about when he wakes up? He’ll come looking for Steve. Steve can’t hide. These people deserve the truth. With the truth, Steve can mould the present into something less dreadful than the future. Think of those obelisks and graveyards filled with names. Think of all those other Steves waiting for their best friends to come back from the war. Think about all the wives waiting for their husbands, of the sisters waiting for their brothers, of their mothers waiting for their sons. Steve swallows hard. If he joins the war and can lessen even one of those deaths, then it’ll be worth it. 

Outwardly, none of his thought process shows. Outwardly, Steve just says, “Yes.”

“What will be your public persona?” Peggy asks. “Captain America freed from the ice or Captain America from the future? We can always create something else too, if you’d like.” 

The way she says _we_ fills him with honey-warmth. He’s not alone even if he is an anachronism. “People deserve the truth.”

“You would say that,” she says, softly, and some sort of sadness clings to her with the wispiness of a veil. 

*

Leaving the commander’s office, Steve runs into Bucky. Bucky, wide-eyed, missing an arm, his mouth parted in a small ‘o’, vulnerable. But that look doesn’t last for long; Bucky’s face goes blank and he looks away. 

And Steve… doesn’t know why. He can’t begin to guess at why. It floors him, the realisation that he doesn’t understand Bucky anymore. “Mornin’, Captain,” Bucky says, staring resolutely at a spot on the floor. 

“Buck,” Steve says. He’s glad to see Bucky up and about, either way. Bucky stiffens further at the nickname. “How are you? What’re you here for?”

“Tryna plea not to get sent back,” Bucky snarls, “what do you think? That a one-armed gimp would still be allowed to fight?“

It’s as though their positions are reversed. Steve feels that low roar inside him that demands Bucky has to be safe at all costs. Bucky _should_ go home — it’s the same one that drove Bucky to tell Steve to stay that night at the expo. But since Steve has been in his position, his heart goes out for him. He tries to reach forward, hold Bucky earnestly, but Bucky takes a step back. 

“I’ll do something about your arm,” Steve promises. He’ll get Bucky onto his squadron. He can take care of Bucky. He will. 

Bucky looks distrustful, but whatever he has against Steve doesn’t seem to win out over his want to stay on the front lines. He nods curtly, then looks away again, as though he can’t bear to see Steve. 

*

Seeing Howard Stark is worse than a physical blow. Steve can trace all the features of Tony Stark in his father. He realises abruptly that he’s so much more familiar with the son that he’s ever been with the father. 

“Morning, Stark,” he calls, trying not to think of the other Stark when Howard looks up. Steve has access to his lab, so Stark doesn’t look surprised. 

“Man of the future!” Howard says. “What’re you looking for today?”

“I was wondering if you could make an arm,” Steve says. “A prosthetic — but metal.”

Howard raises his eyebrows. “Look, I’m trying to supply weapons for the entire war effort. No offence meant, Captain, but I don’t have the _time_ to make just an arm for somebody. I don’t even know how.”

It leaves Steve with a sour taste in his mouth. He hadn’t realised how much he’d been hoping for Howard to agree, and then he wonders if it’s because he’s trying to shape this Bucky into the one he remembers, the one with the hair to his shoulders, the one who rarely fully smiled but just quirked his lips up, the one that Steve had left in the twenty-first century.

Is it terrifying to think that Steve is more familiar with a Bucky who’s been the Winter Soldier than this Bucky who’s known nothing but being Steve’s best friend?

*

The mattresses aren’t the same, he thinks, and neither are the sheets. Peggy’s sheets should be luxurious compared to his and Bucky’s back in their Brooklyn apartment, but all he can compare them to now are the ones that Tony insisted on buying for all of them like the splurging billionaire that he was. 

He stares at the ceiling, feeling the sheets on his bare skin. Peggy’s risen from the bed and is combing her hair and trying to make self presentable after what Steve did to her. He sees a bite mark he left on the curve of her thigh and it stirs arousal low in his gut. 

By the evening light, her body is soft and shapely, like the swell of a seaside. Her skin looks golden, and her face is steely and calm and gorgeous as always. “You’re beautiful,” Steve says from the bed.

“As are you,” she says, and leans down to kiss him. 

He watches her as he basks pleasantly in the afterglow and she moves around the bedroom. She’s looking down at a stack of papers on her desk when she says, “Did I ever create something like a defence devision?“

“You did,” Steve says. He feels loose and proud. “You made SHIELD, Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division. Later it became Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. You were amazing.“

“Was I?” she asks, noncommittally. 

“You founded it with Stark. SHIELD’s still alive in my time and still protecting the Earth.” _My time_ , he’d called it, he realises, even though it shouldn’t be his time anymore. “You… You married a soldier — I never learnt his name — and you had two children.”

She’s stopped moving, he realises, but as soon as she senses he’d noticed, she smiles. 

There’s something wrong, Steve thinks. 

“They must’ve been lovely,” Peggy says, and Steve’s suddenly wondering if he’s done the right thing.

*

It turns out Bucky is still stubborn as mule, but now Steve’s not sure why. In the past Buck would’ve tried to avoid Steve patching him up because he wanted to save the supplies for Steve, but now– Steve suspects Bucky has some sort of vendetta against him and it’s so _frustrating_.

“I’m your _commanding officer_ ,” Steve says. “James Buchanan Barnes. _Sit down_.”

Bucky’s jaw works silently, furiously, and for an instant the glint in his eye is almost familiar. Then he sits in the grass, pissed as high hell and radiating it. The rest of the Howlies look around at each other and a frisson of nervous tension passes through them. They’re camped out outside an Axis-held town right now, and a fucking mine went off and Bucky’s bleeding from the head. 

Steve’s got a medkit out, crouching in front of Bucky. If he wouldn’t be so idiotic and refuse treatment like this, Steve wouldn’t have to worry so much. Steve can protect him from bullet-fire but he can’t magically sense _mines_. 

“You’re not Steve,” Bucky says, right to his face. “Everyone else is taking this lyin’ down, but you know what? You’re not fucking Steve.”

Steve breathes hard through his nose. He assumes Bucky’s level of distrust means that he only lets Steve treat his wounds, which Steve remembers being one of his traumas after Azzano. “I’m not trying to be. I’m trying to stop this war, here.”

“You’re marrying Carter,” Bucky snarls, and that’s _not_ where Steve expected Bucky to go. “Steve was in love with Carter. Carter was in love with Steve. You’re just some imposter who swoops in ’n’ assumes he has her heart — just like you swoop in and pretend to be my best friend.”

“I’m not pretending to be your best friend,” Steve says levelly, but in reality his heart is pounding. Bucky knows his weak spots, knows how to aim words there and he damn knows how to _twist_. 

“Then don’t patch me up—” 

“—I’d patch up any of my men, you dolt—“

“—don’t do me favours like bringing me to fight with you,” Bucky shoots back. ”Don’t call me _Buck_. Don’t tell me I’m coming home. My home’s _gone_! Stevie’s _dead_ , you imposter, you fuckin’ imposter, he’s all the way under the ice and you won’t even rescue him because you want to stay with Carter and he’d take her away because _you_ lost her in _your_ world–“

“Shut _up_ , Bucky. Shut up.” Steve has never felt this urge before, this urge to just make Bucky _shut the fuck up_. He’s never been so angry at Bucky in his entire life. “You think I don’t love her? You don’t know what the hell goes on behind our closed doors. I carried her picture around for _seventy eight_ years. That’s longer than you can even _fathom_ , Bucky. That’s longer than your life twice over. And you think I don’t know you?”

He shoves closer to Bucky, furious. “I know your knees get cold at night. I know that dingy apartment of ours inside out. I know you stole medication for me. I know you put taped down our windows and I know why. I know the way you sutured my damn cuts so let me stitch up yours and stop being such a stubborn prick!”

Bucky hisses, “Then do you know I gave Stevie a suckjob when we were sixteen and plastered?”

The rest of the Howlies are looking away, but Steve’s vision narrows down to Bucky. Just Bucky. Everything else is suddenly very quiet. 

Bucky swallows. Steve follows the movement of his throat. “Do you know that– if there’s one person I love, it’s Stevie?” Saying that seems to give him confidence, because the aggression returns, building in momentum while Steve’s floored. He doesn’t know what to think, let alone what to say. “Yeah. I didn’t think so. Guess you didn’t know your Bucky as well as you thought. Fuck right off, _Captain America_. You’re not him and I’m not yours.”

Steve doesn’t even know how they get through the rest of their mission, but somehow he does it while not talking to Bucky even once. 

*

Peggy’s asking him why he isn’t coming to sleep. Steve stands by the window, looking down at the street. There’s a lady walking out there with an umbrella. She’s wearing a dress long enough to brush her ankles. People don’t wear things like that anymore, in his time. And the streets aren’t paved like that, and the buildings are a lot taller, and the cars don’t look nor sound like that, and the stars are a lot dimmer because the city’s a lot brighter. 

“Do you think I don’t belong here?” Steve asks. “I’m not this world’s Steve.”

He hears the sound of her bare feet. Her slender arms wrap around his waist. She kisses his shoulder. “You’ve given everything to be here,” she says. “I do love you. You may be different, but you will always be Steve. No one is as brave.”

But Steve doesn’t feel brave now. He feels afraid, afraid like he’s young and back in Brooklyn in clothes too big for him and a world that’s too big for him. He feels like Bucky’s answer was more honest, more true, and it hurts him terribly. 

*

They’ve got Red Skull. 

The thought thrums through Steve’s mind. Red Skull is in the bunker just ahead. He’s so _close_. He’s not sure if HYDRA knows they’re here, but he nods behind him to signal to the rest of them and he sees them moving forwards in the grass. Dum Dum gives him the returning signal after they’ve all shifted, letting him know that they’re ready. 

Steve breathes, bracing his shield in front of him. Howard made him another one since he left his with Sam, but he’s already used to its weight. Steve will go first since he’s the most likely to survive. On his left is Bucky. Steve can sense his presence, hostile and bristling and alert. Just on instinct he glances left to check. 

Bucky doesn’t meet his eyes. His face and his neck is all smeared with dirt, even on his chest where his shirt’s been unbuttoned. His dogtags gleam. Steve hasn’t thought about what Bucky’s said. He can’t think about it too deeply. Otherwise he’ll- he’ll _what_? What if his Bucky back at home loved him too? Steve can’t think about that. He doesn’t want to think about how he might’ve hurt Bucky. 

He needs to focus. 

It happens so fast. A sharp, echoing _crack_ of gunfire rings through his ears and the bullet goes through Bucky’s head and takes out the left half of his face with the exit wound. Bucky collapses face-down like a puppet with its strings cut. He’s on the ground. He’s not breathing. It’s impossible. _He’s not breathing_. All their differences fall away. Bucky’s been shot through the head. Bucky’s not breathing. Steve thinks that he stops breathing, as well. 

The smell of blood reaches him. Someone’s shouting his name but Steve doesn’t hear, doesn’t think. All he knows is that whoever killed Bucky has to die. Steve will raze the _world_ to ashes. He leaps to his feet and wills, wills with every fibre of his being, wills with such conviction that he _has_ to avenge this, wills that in some impossible way, if he destroys whoever fired the shot, Bucky will start breathing again, there won’t been a gaping hole in his head, Steve won’t be able to see the glisten of bone through where his face has been torn off. It just _can’t be_.

He can feel it coming, the rush of power like a tornado, a storm roaring inside him. Captain America’s shield falls to the ground — what is there left for him to protect? — and with both hands he catches Mjolnir and wields the weapon of the gods and his men look on as the sky tears open and lightning shatters everything. 

*

Afterwards, Bucky is still dead. Steve hunches over his body. Red Skull is dead, but that’s such a hollow victory when Bucky isn’t breathing. He closes his hands over Bucky’s. There’s no answering squeeze. How can Bucky be dead? Steve has never understood it. He feels as though his chest is breaking open all over again. He doesn’t know which one is worse, Bucky screaming as he falls from the train or Bucky breathing his name as he dissolves, or this look of half-shock on Bucky’s face, caught unawares by something so mundane as a bullet. 

The rest of the Howling Commandoes are keeping their distance. He knows that they’re wondering who he really is. Where did the hammer come from? What happened to him? He assumes it’s one of them who’s arrived to ease him away when he senses the presence, but it’s not. It’s a lady, beautiful in an uncountable and otherworldly way. The wind doesn’t touch her armoured dress. “Steve Rogers,” she says. Mjolnir flies out from where it’s lying in the mud beside him and into her hand. “You're out of time.”

“I know,” he says, still clutching onto Bucky with everything he has. “I know. I just wanted–“

“I am Frigga, the Queen of Asgard,” she says. This is before she died, he realises. He remembers Thor mourning her and her infinite wisdom. “And you are lost.”

Steve starts to sob, then. Because he _has_ lost. He’s lost everything. 

She cups his head. He feels like a child. He thought going back would make him happy, but he’s been so wrong.

“There is still a way for you, but you must find it,” she tells him. 

*

Peggy knows something is wrong as soon as she sees him. “Steve,” she says, her body language open, inviting him to speak and share his troubles. Steve throws his shield down and says nothing. 

He sits on one of those half-sawn logs that pass for benches at their temporary encampment and stares into the emptiness. 

“Sometimes I think you like getting punched,” Bucky had said, when he found Steve on his ass in some grimy alley in the middle of Brooklyn.

“I had him on the ropes,” Steve’d said. They both knew it wasn’t true, but Bucky always humoured him. Most of the time Bucky didn’t try to push Steve’s dignity. That’s because Bucky saw Steve for what was inside, and that was always been the problem, wasn’t it? Bucky saw right through him. 

Steve doesn’t know how those dark blue eyes do it, but Bucky sees through him. Every single time. 

“I bought fries,” Bucky had said. “They’re up in the apartment. Let’s get you washed up and eat, yeah?”

Bucky was always glorious, unreachable, a monument. Handsome and on the other side of the room surrounded by women and people who wanted him in the army. But every time, Bucky would look over across the distance and smile at him, weak little Steve. Bucky was taller, stronger, fought everything that Steve tried to throw himself into. Bucky was his childhood hero.

When Steve shot up, he always thought that Bucky took it harder than Steve himself. He thought, sometimes, that he could see Bucky hesitating, wondering if he still deserved to always be at Steve’s side. 

Idiotic Bucky. Bucky was always still his hero. 

*

It becomes readily apparent that Steve doesn’t function anymore. Peggy leaves plates for him to eat and he ends up donating it to the homeless that he passes on the streets. She catches him doing it one day, and her tightly-pressed lips of disapproval don’t hurt him as much as the sadness in her eyes does. She stops trying to feed him after that, but she does encourage him to try to go outside. 

They don’t sleep together either. Steve never comes to bed. He sits by the window listlessly. If he’s at the front lines, he lies awake in his cot. She tries to comfort him, but it makes him feel worse that he can’t be happier for her, so she stops that, too. 

Otherwise, she’s pure steel. Her mission always comes first. He sees her slot on ankle hostlers and get dressed for missions and build up SHIELD. She’s so much stronger than he is. 

Bucky’s died before his eyes three times now, but it never gets any easier. 

*

The truth is that Steve had been too afraid to tell Bucky that he was leaving. He’d wanted to. Bucky had given him so many openings. Bucky — so vivid in Steve’s memory, this absolute replica of him, smelling like metal and oil and dust and something that’s just so pure Bucky that Steve doesn’t know how to describe it — lounging on the couch, his hair spread around him, mouth quirked up in a smile, carefree and powerful, remains in Steve’s mind like a moment preserved in a snow globe. 

Steve was going to say, “I’m leaving. I’m leaving forever. Do you wanna be Captain America when I’m gone?” but his voice had just caught in his throat and he didn’t want to break that happiness, drop the globe, shatter the glass. He regrets it now. Maybe Bucky would’ve talked him into staying. 

He’s only left the shield in Sam’s apartment later, shame filling his every cell. 

*

Steve calls in a favour from the army. One last favour, he promises. He doesn’t tell Peggy he’s going, but he does take the watch from her dresser, and then he realises that he’s forgotten. He’s forgotten what year he left. Was it 2020? 2021? The years of his grief, the years of everyone’s grief had all ran together. He’s forgotten. He’s forgotten about _his_ Bucky, he realises, with horror. 

He pushes the screaming voice in his mind away and takes the plane to the Arctic. He calls on Mjolnir again, closes his eyes and prays, and for a moment feels the ghost touch of the Queen of Asgard and then the ice splits around him. 

The Arctic is winter incarnate. Everywhere is nothing; visibility ends a short distance away; the cold is alive. Steve has never felt so alone nor alien until he stands in the Arctic and watches ice slide away from the Valkyrie. The plane is so unfamiliar yet familiar. He forces the cockpit open and sees himself, frozen, pale, almost dead-looking. 

Steve sits there at the front of the plane, watching himself unthaw as the days roll by. A few times he has to jog back to the other plane to check that the fuel hasn’t frozen, but a quick start to the engine, making sure its internals are still warm, and he returns to his vigil. 

Steve sits there and thinks about what he’s going to tell himself when he wakes up. I stole your life. I got your best friend killed. I know you thought he was dead already, but I killed him again. I’m going back home because I can’t live without him. Losing him has ruined my life so much more than losing Peggy has. 

I think I’m in love with my best friend. Thanks for helping me figure it out. 

Steve takes a deep breath.

At the end? The other Steve punches him when he finds out that Bucky’s dead again. The play of emotions across his face — the timid, breaking hope when he hears that Bucky survived, and the shocked pain when he hears that Bucky’s been shot — devolves into a sob and a fist. Steve lets himself get hit. The sting of pain is deserved and good. He licks away the taste of blood.

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

“It’s okay,” the other Steve says, eventually, seeming to shrink in on himself. “I told himself that he was dead anyway. I just wish-”

“He said that he loved you.”

“I thought so,” Steve says, curling even smaller. “I thought so.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, don’t be- I’m glad that we’ll be happy somewhere. I’ll remember it. Just go home.”

*

If he goes back too early, he’ll create a splintered timeline and be trapped. He has to take the risk. Steve Rogers returns in the year 2024. He returns in the dark, tasting dust, trying to find his footing on the transportation platform. “Lights, please,” he says aloud. If he’s in the Avengers complex, Friday will be listening. 

They do come on, slowly, allowing his eyes to adjust. “Welcome home, Captain,” she says. Hearing her voice alone fills him with such nostalgia. He can’t stop his smile spreading. 

“Just Steve Rogers,” he says. “How long have I been gone?”

“Approximately a year,” she replies. “I’ve alerted Dr. Banner of your return.”

“Thank you, Friday,” he says. He’s in one of the now unused laboratories. Through the glass he can see the empty corridor. Everything, the ground beneath his feet, even what he’s breathing, just- the scale of things. It’s all so familiar. “Can you tell me where Bucky is?”

She gives him an address. “Would you like me to alert him of your return, too?”

Steve’s heart leaps. It’s as though it’d been holding on, unsure without the confirmation that _Bucky was alive_. His Bucky. His Bucky was alive. “No. I’ve gotta see him in person. Tell Bruce I’ll meet with him after I see Buck,” he says in a gush. Not just Bucky, too. The friends he has left — the family of mismatched superheroes — they’re still alive. 

Friday operates the elevators for him. She even pulls up a car for him at the front of the building and he thanks her profusely through a haze of hope. His body feels light. He looks at the New York skyscrapers with a familiar awe, and is delighted when he sees something a billboard of Sam as Captain America. He looks at the pigeons strutting, at the people chattering on cellphones, at the business suits and ties, at gaggles of tourists switching between languages, at the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Steve’s just overwhelmed. 

He’s coming home. This has been his home ever since he woke up in the ice. He just hadn’t realised it. It takes leaving to realise it. Only halfway through the drive does he realise that with this choice, he’s lost Peggy forever, but the ache is old. Peggy _is_ gone, but Steve has to accept that. He’s had years to, and Peggy had lived a good life. She’d made her legacy in SHIELD, she’d married and had her children, she’d died on old age and nothing else. 

He’s going to donate the compass to the Smithsonian, he decides. Peggy had a good life without Steve. Now Steve needs to catch up and make his own life, and he knows what’s been missing from it: Buck. 

*

1945, Steve Rogers has been pulled from the ice. He’s standing at graveyard where they buried Buck. There are a lot of flowers there, from the Howlies, from everyone who knew him in the army, and now Steve’s got a great big bouquet for him too. 

But he’s still surprised to see someone he doesn’t recognise at Buck’s headstone. There’s a lady and she’s dressed like nothing he’s ever seen. Something about her makes him nervous in some way, though he’s not sure what it is. She looks like royalty even though Steve’s never laid his eyes on royalty before and he has the absurd feeling that he should be kneeling. 

“Hello, Steve,” she says. “Something was taken out of time from you. I’m here to return it.”

Steve hears someone else coming into the graveyard. Familiar footsteps. Buck— _Buck?_ — when Steve whirls around to ask questions of the oddly dressed lady, though, she’s gone. 

*

Steve takes the stairs four at a time. Friday had cheerfully told him that Bucky lived on the sixth floor, room twenty in Brooklyn Heights. The same building at Steve used to live in, but a different apartment. He bursts in through the door and winces when he feels the lock pop off and shoot across the room. 

The smell of onions and egg wafts over to him. Bucky was always a good cook — and there he is. “ _Buck_ ,” Steve says, panting, smiling. 

There must’ve been something restraining him from looking at Bucky before. _Really_ looking at Bucky. Because Bucky’s radiant. His hair’s tied up, he’s got an apron on, he’s wearing mismatching socks, he’s in a loose shirt that exposes the back of his neck that’s soft, downy skin. His metal arm is tossing the onions with a spatula. 

Bucky looks up. Steve goes breathless. “Hi,” he says, “I think I love you.”

Bucky– of all things, frowns, and turns the stove on low heat and moves to one of the drawers. Steve comes closer, confused. “Buck? What’s wrong?” Bucky takes out a bottle of pills from the drawer. He unscrews the cap. “What’re those for? Buck? Answer me, please?”

“Hallucinations,” Bucky says, tipping one into his palm and examining it.

Steve’s voice goes tight. “You been having a lot of ‘em?”

“No,” Bucky says. “I haven’t had one since I got on the chair ten months ago. This is new. Man, Fury’s gonna be pissed that I’m backsliding.”

“The chair?” Steve echoes, starting to feel like a bit of a broken radio. 

“Yeah.” Bucky swallows it dry and goes back to his dinner-making. “Listen to this, Stevie: it gets more and more pathetic. First I decide to go on a suicide mission, then I change my mind and _willingly_ sit on the chair, and instead of either dying or getting wiped, because I think I’m stuck in this loop of hallucinations, I end up spilling my guts to everyone about how much I love you.” Bucky chuckles to himself. “It’s so fucked up it’s hilarious.”

“You love me?” Steve says. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “It’s sad. I only really admitted it after you were gone. Everyone says I’ll feel better after talking about it and I do. A bit. It’s slow goin’.” 

He smiles sadly at Steve. Steve panics. He doesn’t know what to do. What he wants to do is back Bucky up against the counter and kiss him senseless, but he knows that wouldn’t be right, wouldn’t be fair. “How do I convince you that I’m real?”

Bucky’s expression slides away. “What?” he says. Steve grabs his hands and squeezes. Bucky breathes, “Shit.” 

“I’m home, Buck,” Steve says. “I’m sorry. God, I was so stupid. I didn’t realise I was happier here.”

Bucky blinks at him, again and again. Something in Steve’s expression must blind him. “I’m gonna need time,” he manages eventually. 

“We’ve got time,” Steve says. “We do. We’ve got all the time in the world, Buck.” He puts all his happiness into his smile, and slowly, hesitantly, Bucky gives that little wry grin back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I was gonna put some stuff about endgame here on why i wrote the most horrible, tormented, and angry thing I was capable of, but instead of such an angry rant, i’m going about it a different way.
> 
> So I have a best friend. We met when we were 6. It’s honestly the shit of fairytales. I’m really lucky. The essence is: Nothing really replaces knowing someone since you were both stupid little brats getting wedgies in the playground, who knew you when you were going through your edgy phase, who saw you mooning after your first crush, who you made all your best memories with, who suffered with you struggle after struggle and is _still_ there for you regardless. Please treat your best friends right. I’m not saying sleep with them (I definitely wouldn’t sleep with mine) but, for Christ’s sake, don’t leave them for old flames like Cap did in Endgame. Friendship is such a pure form of love and it’s no less valid than a romantic relationship, especially a romantic relationship that requires you to leave your big Avengers family and _erase Peggy’s pre-existing life with a successful career and kids and a husband._
> 
> Obviously I’ve written them (Steve & Bucky) in as romantic here, but Marvel treats them as platonic and, still, Cap’s decision really drives me up the wall. Yeah. Big _fuck you_ from me to that choice for ending in Endgame.


End file.
